


The Watcher

by TheMagnificentKiwi



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Explicit Language, F/M, Flashbacks, Horror, Infection, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Resident Evil 3 Remake, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 62,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27084625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMagnificentKiwi/pseuds/TheMagnificentKiwi
Summary: No matter how fast we run, our past catches up to us eventually. The trick is to be ready for it when it does.~~Four years after their paths diverged following the Raccoon City Incident, Jill and Carlos are reunited as the emergence of BOWs in a dangerous and remote area of South America threatens an international crisis. There, they find more than they bargained for as horrors from their past reappear and a new threat emerges - one that could lead to Umbrella's downfall or their own.
Relationships: Carlos Oliveira/Jill Valentine
Comments: 117
Kudos: 113





	1. Prologue - Quarantine

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am with a new story when I only ever intended to write the one back in April! I've been wanting to write a more action/horror-filled story and after all the positive feedback those chapters of my last fic received I decided to go ahead with this idea that has been burning away for a while.
> 
> The concept is simple - Carlos and Jill's paths diverge in 1999 and three years later they are unexpectedly reunited and forced to work together once again. Canonically, it is set just before the Umbrella's End scenario of Umbrella Chronicles, from late 2002 to early 2003. There will be a few more returning characters other than the ones currently tagged but tagging them at this point may be a bit of a spoiler. It will primarily follow Carlos & Jill, with flashbacks to the period immediately following RE3 exploring their initial time together and how they ended up separating.
> 
> I usually aim for one new chapter a week, however this is a crazy and often un-fun time of year so some may come late but equally some may come early.  
> I hope you enjoy - if you do, please leave a comment below to let me know what you enjoyed (or didn't!), I always love hearing from you and it really does help build a better story :)

**October 1998, Mercy Falls, Ohio.**

It wasn’t the armed guards that set her on edge, or the way the doctors poked and prodded her to within an inch of her life. It wasn’t the fact that they took only nasal swabs and no blood with the admission that even if they did know what to test it for she would be dead before a positive result came back anyway. It wasn’t even the wristband they tagged her with, or the questions they asked.

It was the cages.

Jill didn’t like the idea of a quarantine camp, but she recognised the necessity. She and Carlos were the lucky ones, she was told. Forced to shower and scrub away the grime of the city, their personal effects either disposed of or set through an autoclave, handed military-issue clothing and then ushered to a medical tent where they were about as gentle as one could expect a production line of doctors to be.

There were hundreds of survivors at the camp, one of apparently many across what they were now referring to as the ‘Arklay Quarantine Zone’. Some were in a worse state than she, some barely blemished. It should have been comforting that so many made it out.

But then there were the cages.

They were led past them on the way to the van, flanked on either side by armed guards. There were roughly a dozen people within, all the pallid shade of inevitable death and every single one of them crying, screaming or otherwise expressing their vehement reluctance to be there.

“I’m not infected!” screamed a woman perhaps no older than she, clinging to the bars as blood dripped from a saturated bandage on her forearm. “Oh God, please let me out…”

A balding man trembled on a bench, the white leg of his sweatpants soaked through with bright red blood. At the back, a younger gentleman collapsed, fitting and foaming at the mouth, and the others ran to the front, reaching through the bars, begging the passers-by for help. Two armed guards appeared through a door at the back, dragged the man through plastic sheeting on the other side and seconds later a gunshot was heard, and the screaming started anew.

‘You can’t do anything for them,’ she reminded herself, over and over again. The vial in her pocket felt ever heavier, and it was all she could do to choke back tears of anger.

It was then that she felt warmth against her palm, and fingers slid between her own. Carlos wasn’t looking at her, had set his jaw in an expression of muted rage and…guilt? He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed his back, knuckles white but he didn’t seem to mind.

Much later, she would recognise the significance of that moment, of perhaps not an olive branch but a buoy, one that would keep them both afloat in the weeks and even months to come. It was the moment she realised that she was not alone, not anymore, that their partnership had not ended now that the danger was over.

They were herded into a van with six others, driven to a nearby hotel the military had commandeered and checked in to a King with the orders to stay put for seventy-two hours. Carlos had argued at the door, for the military were taking ‘rescued together’ to mean ‘stay together’ and seemed to take that one step further in assuming they were a couple.

“You’re expecting the lady to share a bed with a man she’s just met?” he had raged.

“Sir, this is the only room we have left. Sort it out between yourselves.”

His negotiations unsuccessful, Carlos had sighed when they were left to it, taking in the large bed, the desk, the television, and then the sofa by the window with lingering irritation.

“I’ll take the sofa,” he said. It wasn’t an offer.

“With your injuries? Don’t be stupid - you’ll wake up feeling worse. We’ll share the bed, I don’t care.”

She could have shared that bed with three others and still fallen asleep – all she needed was something comfortable and enough silence for the demons to inevitably drown. The exhaustion would take care of the rest.

Still, he twisted his face, seemed pained by the thought of depositing his heft onto a bed beside her.

“I don’t take up much room,” she said with an encouraging smile. “Just keep your hands to yourself and we’re good.”

It was mid-afternoon when they had checked in, and they slept through until early evening. It was the catatonic kind of sleep that physical exhaustion wrought, blessedly free of nightmares. When they woke, wounds ached a little more and they just laid there in silence until her stomach growled and they were both taken by the unexpected hilarity of the interruption.

It was during dinner that they finally talked, plates piled high with buffet food. It had occurred to her that she didn’t know him, not really. She knew his first name, true, and that he worked for Umbrella, but there was certainly more to him than that and the more time she spent with him the more she wanted to probe those depths and perhaps figure out why someone like him had ended up on Umbrella’s payroll.

His surname was Oliveira, and he was Colombian by birth. Umbrella had picked him up in what he would only refer to as a ‘dark time’, and the thought alone had made him uncomfortable enough that she hadn’t pressed. He had attended high school in New York, was a dual national through his mother’s side, and had served compulsory time with the Colombian army. He liked rum and rock music, never had much of a taste for soccer but enjoyed basketball, was an only child but had more cousins than he could keep track of and was actually a damn funny guy.

They hadn’t ventured much deeper than that over dinner, but the conversation flowed a lot easier as they retreated to their room. It wasn’t until a nightmare lifted her from fragile sleep and dropped her in an empty bed and she found him in the bar downstairs, nursing what she could only assume was neat rum, that they really got to the meat of their issues.

He had only wanted to help people, he had said. Umbrella had offered him a chance to do that and look where that had led. No amount of warm words could chase away that chill, no amount of reassurance could assuage the guilt. He was part of the problem again, he kept saying, good intentions leading invariably down a flame-licked descent.

She knew something about that and shared that with him, told him all about that night in July and the weeks that had followed. To protect and serve, she had sworn. But her boss and her boss’s boss had turned out to be exactly who the city had needed protecting from. When the others had fled, seeing that they could change nothing, she in her stubbornness had stayed.

“If I’d have left, you wouldn’t have lost the vaccine,” she said. “Brad wouldn’t have died trying to save me. Mikhail, Tyrell, the civilians…”

There was a moment’s silence as he considered this.

“If you had left, I don’t think I’d have made it as far as I did.”

“You spent half your time saving my ass. Don’t act like that was me.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’d…just about lost hope when you showed up. We all had. Three days without much food, or rest. We were a platoon of fifty at the start of the week. Every time we sent two guys out there, one didn’t come back. I’ll be honest, we didn’t expect you to make it back from the power station. Three guys had already tried. When you did… _fuck_ , it was like I could _breathe_ again.”

Jill thought back to the carefree, flirtatious man she had met and realised now just how much of that had been compensation. She thought then to him carrying her through the city, tearing the hospital apart for the vaccine when he was running on empty himself.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why did you save me? You had your orders, you had no way to know if I was even alive.”

Carlos let out a short huff of humourless laughter, raised his glass to his lips, paused, and then took a quick sip of the amber liquid within.

“I was there to rescue people,” he said. “Fuck any orders that got in the way of that.”

Her heart sank a little, thought she couldn’t figure out why. Had she expected a reason other than a soldier doing his job? Perhaps she had thought that she’d found a friend in that hell, someone that cared enough for her to stick around? Loneliness was not a feeling she was familiar with, so she did not recognise it then. Confined to her apartment, she hadn’t spoken to anyone in weeks before that night. It felt good to just share space with someone who wanted to be around her.

She turned to Carlos and he was looking back at her, a soft smile on his lips. He had a kind face, she realised. She didn’t know what that meant, but he was handsome in a way that was as easy on the soul as it was on the eyes.

“Plus,” he continued. “I figured if you died I didn’t get to buy you a drink when it was all over.”

“You still haven’t,” she pointed out.

“We’ve got all night, Supercop.”

As Day One rolled into Day Two she found that this house arrest was far more pleasant than her last. Carlos managed to scrounge a pack of cards from one of the hotel staff and she learned quickly that he did not possess a poker face. They moved on to Rummy, Go Fish, and finally Snap, by which point she was laughing more than concentrating.

She began to find his presence warming, and the distraction of him became a welcome one. There were so many unknowns past their discharge date, things she would have been obsessing over if left to her own devices. With him, she took time to just be human, to celebrate the fact that she was alive despite overwhelming odds.

Then the darkness crept in. It started with a news bulletin announcing potential connections between Umbrella and the events behind them. Jill liked to watch the news, preferred to stay on top of events and know exactly what they were stepping out into. Carlos didn’t. She never pressed on the matter of his now ex-employer, but the guilt he carried over his involvement with them was no small measure.

Her demons reared their heads too, and without her pills sleep didn’t come too easily. The second night, she woke with a guttural cry that woke him too, and he reached for her in such panic that she felt thoroughly ashamed when the adrenaline wore off. She expected an admonishment, but no such thing came.

She was a flayed nerve and the care he administered, from the hand that rubbed her back to the soothing words he uttered, was a balm she was wholly unused to. In the end, she had cried against him and he had held her, even as they laid back down to sleep. It was enough to know that she was not alone, but she greedily lapped up any and all affection that he offered.

He did not mention it in the morning, and she would have let it lie but the need to apologise was too strong. Carlos, however, had held up a hand and was having none of it.

“You think I don’t have them too? I do. You’re just a heavier sleepier than I am.”

Day Three was when things got heated. She didn’t even know how it started, only that his compassion had got on her last nerve and she had started screaming at him. She wanted him to tell her to get a grip, to snap her out of her malaise and berate her for being so weak. He was angry too, she knew it. He was hurting. Why didn’t he show it like a normal person? Why did he just walk around and pretend that nothing was wrong?

He stood there with arms crossed as she laid into him, not rising to the bait, even as she pushed him and he didn’t sway.

“You can punch me if you like,” he said. “If you think that will make you feel better. Pretty sure it won’t though.”

She could see the anger in his eyes – she was so close. She didn’t need him to be comforting, she needed him to get mad, for them both to be mad and spar and then when it was over they could figure out what to do about it.

If you asked her why she kissed him, she wouldn’t be able to give you a straight answer. ‘It felt right’ was the closest she ever got, but even that fell short. She was trying to elicit a reaction, but the closer she got to him the more of a reaction she felt in herself and a kiss just seemed like a sensible move in the heat of the moment.

It was hard, furious, closed-mouthed and far from romantic. But the anger behind those dark eyes flickered, and for a moment she was filled with something that resembled regret, all intent of provocation gone.

Then, he reached for her, kissed her properly, and the tension in her gut unravelled. He tasted like spiced rum, something she had never had a taste for before, but it worked on him. He was rough but gentle at the same time, the palms of his hands warm against her cheeks, and as soon as she kissed back one of those hands went to her waist and pulled her flush to him.

She knew she was fucked. As soon as the hard planes of his muscles pressed to her softer curves, she realised that this was something she so desperately needed. She grabbed at him through the soft jersey of his sweatpants, gasping at how hard he already was and just how much of him she found there.

Teeth caught his bottom lip and a growl rumbled deep in his throat, fingertips digging a little harder into her bruised hips.

She pushed him to the bed, straddling him as she rid herself of her T-shirt. Pain cut the movement short, and she hissed in frustration as her left shoulder refused to rid itself from its prison. Carlos saw this and helped, running tender fingers over the wound, then up to her shoulder and down to her breast. She swore she felt him harden further between her thighs and groaned in response. A cocky look came over him and when they hit the mattress again it was with him on top, groping along the expanse of exposed skin from her abdomen to her neck. There were bruises and wounds aplenty and she was sure they hurt, but she either didn’t feel it in the moment or didn’t mind. He was hardly unblemished himself, even hissed in pain a time or two but quickly gathered himself.

His shirt left next, revealing a torso as contoured as she had imagined it would be (she had imagined it?). A dusting of soft black hair grew across hard pectorals and extended downwards in a line from his navel, framed by fresh bruises and old scars. She was growing impatient, tugged at him again through his sweats and when he rid himself of them she let out a breathy “ _fuck_ ”.

He left her with no time to consider him, tested her with one thick finger and then two, curled them inside her and smiled when she moaned his name. The only thing gentle about the act that followed was the way with which he eased himself into her, inch by inch, watching her expression for signs of pain or reluctance. She didn’t know what he was playing at, only that she needed all of him, however much his girth stretched her. When she hooked her heels behind his ass and pulled him flush, he groaned loudly, muttered something in Spanish, and then kissed her harder than he had yet.

It was hard and fast and furious, and she truly hadn’t expected anything out of it. She just wanted to be fucked, wanted to forget about Umbrella and Raccoon City and the plethora of injuries that riddled her body. She wanted to escape somewhere her anger could be channelled into something more productive, and he offered her just that.

But it came with unexpected boons. Yes, the roughness of his touch and the slam of his hips against hers was exactly what the doctor ordered, but there was still something so tender about him, something more than desperation in his kiss. The warmth she had been seeking spread through her and filled parts of her she hadn’t known were cold. He rutted into her with the fury of a man with a point to make, but the way he held her throughout confused that carnal part of her. He wouldn’t let her flip him over, slowed his pace every time there was a little too much pain in her moans.

She hadn’t expected to come, very rarely managed it without foreplay, but he seemed to know just the right angle to hit, and when she was so close to the edge he helped her over, groaning with her, finishing with a few shaky thrusts before pulling out and spilling over her abdomen.

Her climax took everything from her – the anger, the hatred. As she stared up at the ceiling, Carlos breathing heavily at her side, she felt empty, a tiny flicker of something she didn’t quite recognise sparking in the darkness, chasing away the shadows at least for now. As the adrenaline wore off, the aches set in, more prominent than they had ever been.

When she looked down and saw the light catch the milky liquid on her stomach a colder emotion emerged. Shame. She was not this reckless. True, her last Depo shot was still good but that was beside the point. She barely knew this man, certainly didn’t know where he had been. A friendship had been blooming between them, one she had well and truly ruined now, and for what? A quick, anger-fuelled fuck?

She wanted to laugh but couldn’t. They still had one more night here, still had to share a bed. She couldn’t even glance at him, how could he look at her the same now that she was covered in him?

Then, she felt something unexpected. Movement at her side preceded the touch of something soft to the skin below her navel. She glanced down again, saw a tissue in the grip of a large, tanned hand wiping away the evidence of her misdeeds.

“Always the worst fucking part,” she heard him chuckle. “Sorry I made such a mess.”

He wasn’t even looking at her, was concentrating on his ministrations, making sure nothing was left. He even ran soft fingertips over dry skin in a quality check, then traced them over her hip bone and down the outside of her thigh. Only then did he look at her, meeting her gaze with those warm eyes.

His expression fell, and the hand that had seconds ago tossed crumpled tissue towards the waste bin reached for her cheek, those eyes now filled with concern.

“Hey,” he breathed. “You okay? Shit, I- I didn’t hurt you did I? I kinda…got a bit carried away.”

The pilot light in the emptiness within sparked a flame that lit every darkened corner. She reached up to him, pulled him to her in a soft yet urgent kiss.

This one was as gentle as their first was rough, devoid of ulterior motives or vulgar intentions. He didn’t have to care. It would have been easier for him not to. And maybe she cared more than she let on, too.

She would figure that out later.

Day Three brought the conversation Jill had been dreading, over French toast and bitter coffee.

“You got anywhere to go?”

“Got a storage locker just outside of Portsmouth. Managed to ship the important stuff out ahead of time. Got some money there, bank cards, fresh clothing. Enough to get me somewhere safe. How about you?”

“I’ve got a place in Dayton. Not a lot of stuff to be honest, I travel light. It’s not the fanciest place, but there’s more’n enough room for one more and it’s about as safe as you can get.”

“You asking me to move in with you?”

“I’m offering a homeless girl a place to stay. Gotta say though, might be better to stay on the move for a while.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The unmarked van that’s been parked across the road since we arrived. Not sure which one of us they’re after but something tells me they’re not concerned about our wellbeing.”

She was surprised that he had noticed. A white van was hardly out of place in a semi-urban setting, but with the bright yellow ‘biohazard’ warning signs the Army had erected around the perimeter, there had been a distinct lack of traffic around the hotel and even less people actually parking up. If they were collecting a loved one why had they been there all three days? If they were with the Army or the government, why did they not drive through the checkpoint?

Jill considered his offer. She wasn’t ready to be alone, not yet. And their odds had already proven greater together than apart.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s get to Dayton and figure it out from there.”


	2. Into The Breach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos had a hard time placing exactly what it was that they were supposed to have ‘survived’. Yeah, the destruction of Raccoon City had changed the world, but it had become the entirety of his, had shifted its course just enough that he was fighting that same battle three years later. No, to survive you had to make it out the other side and he wasn’t convinced that he was there yet.

> **_A new era in the Darien Gap?_** by Alyssa Ashcroft.   
> _January 4 th, 2003._
> 
> The Darien Gap, a dense section of jungle breaking the Pan-American Highway, has long been a place of danger and desperation. Drug runners, armed rebels and traffickers haunt this secretive and deadly corner of the world, but some would believe that something more sinister has taken up residence deep in the wilderness.
> 
> In the three years since the Raccoon City outbreak, the Raccoon Trials have seen transgressions brought to light both on account of governments worldwide and the beleaguered Umbrella Corporation, but whichever way victory swings one thing is clear: the landscape of the world is changing. Whether or not Umbrella Corp is responsible for new weaponry that is rumored to be emerging on the black market, it is impossible to ignore the increasing number of bioterror attacks worldwide and the fact that society is now facing an unprecedented threat.
> 
> Latest rumors would have it that these ‘bioweapons’ are finding their way into the hands of rebel groups and desperate criminal gangs, and locals in both Panama and Colombia are quick to attribute recent unexplained deaths and disappearances in the area of Darien National Park to this narrative.
> 
> While both the Colombian and Peruvian governments have been quick to place blame on Marxist rebels and unscrupulous human traffickers, this explanation raises more questions than it answers when one considers the case of the EBYN news crew. The bodies of two members of Sylvia Bennell’s crew have yet to be recovered, and with official explanation ranging from betrayal by their guerrilla guides to an unfortunate crossing of paths with jaguar, can we truly be sure of exactly what fate they met in the depths of the jungle?
> 
> Anika Jones, spokesperson for the South American branch of the Bioterror Counter Agency (BCA) said last week: “The Gap is one of the most dangerous and remote areas of the world, and as such provides an ideal environment for covert bioterror operations. Deaths and disappearances are not questioned, refugees are not missed, and authorities have largely left the area to the mercy of its inhabitants. In the time since the BCA was brought in we have seen rebels and traffickers withdraw their presence in the area, abandoning camps they have maintained for years. One could argue that the route through the Gap is now safer than it has ever been, but the question remains: why? Why are they leaving? I believe we need to look no further than the fallout of the Raccoon Trials and the appearance of bioweapons in the hands of those who simply do not know how to control them. Umbrella may deny responsibility for these creatures, but the fact remains that they exist, and they pose a very real threat.”
> 
> It is believed that the FBC has been denied involvement in the investigation into the deaths of Ms Bennell and her crew, and both the Panamanian and Colombian governments have declined to comment further on the situation. As tensions escalate can the BCA, a private organisation funded by Umbrella’s rival pharmaceutical companies, uncover the truth behind these developments, or will the horrors within Darien National Park spill further into society? Only time will tell.

* * *

**January 5 th, 2003. Medellin, Colombia.**

Carlos often thought back to the autumn of ’98. They all did, the Raccoon City Survivors. Yeah, they had a name now, like that made it any better. It was a name that drew a certain kind of reaction from anyone who learned of it; a mixture of sympathy and regret, often followed by an act or offer of kindness.

Carlos had a hard time placing exactly what it was that they were supposed to have ‘survived’. Yeah, the destruction of Raccoon City had changed the world, but it had become the entirety of his, had shifted its course just enough that he was still fighting that same battle three years later. No, to survive you had to make it out the other side and he wasn’t convinced that he was there yet.

The days after the fact had been the hardest, wading through a quagmire of thoughts and feelings that felt alien to him. He’d pressed the pause button somewhere before shit had really hit the fan and then suddenly it was broken, and he was forced to play catch-up. It was a darkness, the kind that drowned out everything, lured you in with a promise of calm and then left you exposed and vulnerable. Looking back, he could label it as PTSD but at the time it was just something that needed to be dealt with.

Sometimes the darkness returned. It did for all of them. Even Billy, who was working on his third beer on the stool next to him, a tune on the edge of familiarity playing in the background, just below the clink of glasses and general chatter.

The call came in shortly before midnight: go to bed boys, gonna need you for an early start tomorrow.

“Dunno about you, but that call didn’t come through ‘til this bottle was empty,” Billy said, breaking the silence between them.

A thousand different things came crashing down upon Carlos as the noise of the world rushed back in. When he mentally joined his friend, it was on the tides of laughter.

“Is one good night too much to ask for?” he said.

“Don’t you sit there and kid either of us how this night was going to end.”

“Speak for yourself, old man.”

Billy turned to him with one of those incredulous looks that suggested he ought to be a lot madder than he actually was.

“One day, you’ll be thirty,” he said. “And I ain’t ever going to let you forget that.”

“And when I am, you’ll be thirty-five. That’s five years away from forty. Old man.”

“Alright, after this assignment we’ll take on the town. See who quits first. I don’t think you’ll like what you find.”

“You’re on.”

The conversation continued much in the same vein; two soldiers, passing the time and chasing away the demons with false bravado and hollow masculinity. It was the way it always went.

Carlos was grateful that he had met Billy, though he’d never put it into so many words. If there was one thing time had taught him it was that he didn’t do so well on his own. Left to his own devices, he wound up caught in a cycle of bad decisions, about his career, women, the general direction of his life. Billy wasn’t always the best of influences, but he was someone whose heart was in the right place and his values aligned to his own. Maybe not a True North, but a magnet that steered him that way anyway.

“Sounds like they’re expecting something big,” Carlos said when the silence threatened to settle in again. “They wouldn’t put the call out to NA if it wasn’t.”

“It’ll be politics,” said Billy somewhat bitterly. “We’ve got enough men here. Or…”

A few beats of silence.

“Or…?”

“Said NA were sending ‘their best’? You know their reputation… Their best is the best in the company. And they’re calling us in too? They ain’t expecting this to be a walk in the park.”

“From what I hear it’s literally a walk in a park.”

Billy chuckled at his dumb attempt at a joke, then drained the last of his beer. Carlos could tell this bothered him. He got in these moods from time to time, where he’d just drink and smoke and then one day he’d wake up and it was like nothing had ever happened.

They’d been open about the darker corners of their past – working together as closely as they did, it was kind of necessary – but in the end all that had meant was that they now had company in their own malaise. It was just a thing that had to happen, Billy had once said. Let it be what it is and bounce back at the end. Fighting only makes it worse.

But there was more to it than that. They knew what was happening in the Darien Gap, had for a while. It was only a matter of time before it involved them. But it was a jungle mission and despite the number they had under their belt, Billy still hated them most of all. It was PTSD for sure, Carlos could see that clearly, but not the kind he lived with himself. This wasn’t zombies and monsters, it was something human, something he had been exposed to deep in the jungles of another continent, something that had driven him to South America in the first place. By the time the monsters had appeared in his life, he’d seen enough of humanity’s own monstrosity that the literal kind was a welcome relief.

But this was what they did – lived with their past, made peace with it, to ensure the world had a future.

With a measure of reluctance, they paid up their tab and bade farewell to the familiar barman.

“Here we go again, huh?” Carlos asked as they stepped out into the night.

“Here we go again.”

* * *

**January 7 th, 2003. Miami, Florida.**

There was a knock on the door of their hotel room at 5am. Jill, always an early riser, sat up immediately, stretched her neck, rolled her shoulders and looked over to Chris, asleep in his bed on the other side of the room. He hadn’t moved, not even a snuffle.

It took a moment for the world around her to reshape into something tangible, but she eventually found the strength to plant her feet on the carpeted floor and answer the call.

“Morning,” O’Brian greeted on the other side. His round face was wreathed in shadow, the lines around his eyes more prominent in shades of darkness. His greying hair was mussed, and she smelled the coffee in his hand before she saw it.

“Don’t suppose you thought to pick one up for me?” she asked, squinting at him in the dim light of the hallway.

“I know you like your coffee fresh, didn’t want to risk your wrath. Redfield still asleep?”

“You even have to ask?”

He laughed, a low rumbling sound.

“Alright, kick his ass into gear, car will be here in thirty.”

Rousing Chris was as monumental a task as the one that lay before them, but he eventually relented and grumbled at her.

“C’mon,” she urged. “Last one ready buys the coffee, remember?”

“Money’s in my wallet, go nuts.”

“You can sleep on the plane, but we need to actually get you on it first. It’s your own damn fault for staying up so late last night.”

The sharpness of her tone cut through his fatigue and he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

Twenty minutes later he waited for their order by the coffee stand in reception as she stood with their bags, scanning the empty lobby. It was a small hotel, but that was as far as the BCA budget stretched these days now that funding was drying up. The shrinking budget was a good thing, really; it meant that their work was succeeding. But it also resulted in trips like this one, where another branch in another country needed support and they would ship out on barely any notice.

This time it was the SA branch, struggling with a politically sensitive incident, that had put the call out to NA, requesting ‘the best agents you have’, and apparently that meant Jill and Chris.

 _“You should be honoured,”_ O’Brian, their Operations Manager, had said. _“You are our most experienced agents after all, and how many people actually get paid to go on a jungle trek?”_

Chris approached with her coffee and yawned as she took it.

“How long is this flight?” he asked.

“Three hours, give or take,” she said. She blew into the hole on the top of her cup. “So maybe more of a beauty nap for you.”

“I was up late reading the file, you know.”

“The file I read two days ago?”

He swore under his breath, but she saw a smile. They kept one another on their toes, they both knew the drill by now. She gave him a hard time and he her, but it was never personal.

“At least we’re finally getting that vacation,” he said with a dim chuckle. “You been to South America before?”

“We were in Mexico last year, Chris.”

“I meant outside of work. Running for your life is hardly how you get a feel for a place.”

Jill shook her head.

“No, but…” She considered her next words carefully. “I dated a guy from Colombia once. We talked about going, but…I don’t think either of us was really serious about it.”

“In Raccoon City?”

“No.”

Chris raised an eyebrow but when she didn’t offer anything freely, he did not pursue it.

At that moment, a black car pulled up outside and O’Brian let out a victorious “Ha!”.

“I believe that is our ride,” he said.

He left first and Jill waited for Chris to make a move, but he remained rooted to the spot. When she looked up at him he was staring back at her, taking a long sip from his cup.

“I know things haven’t been great lately,” he said. “But this is one of those things we talked about – one of those differences we want to make.”

Jill gave him a wry smile.

“This you trying to cheer _me_ up for once?”

“Gotta return the favour every now and then.”

There had been an uncomfortable malaise about her recently, and she found it hard to put into words what ailed her. Umbrella were on their last legs; the only branch of the corporation that remained viable was the Russian one and labs were closing quicker than they could shut them down. It was a slow death but a sure one all the same.

Anyone would think she would be happy.

But it wasn’t the death they deserved. They deserved to be flayed, to be exposed so the entire world knew their crimes. Spencer should be in chains, not laughing at them all from one of his half-dozen mansions, getting richer still off the suffering of others. This wasn’t justice, not in her eyes.

And their work was far from done.

The fragmentation of Umbrella had sent splinters across the world, landing, where such things often did, in the poorest of places. They had lost their biggest customer, needed new buyers, and bioweapons had already begun to surface on the black market, utilised sloppily in attacks by groups that really didn’t know what they were doing. Jill didn’t buy the feigned ignorance and closed-door excuses that ‘rogue researchers’ had leaked that shit, no way: this came from the source. And maybe this was their opportunity to prove that, to end the trial in a show of sparks, one that would ignite what remained of them and burn their empire to the ground.

She would say this assignment was personal, but they all were.

* * *

Chris woke up somewhere over Cuba, full of caffeine and pastries. The plane was filled with holidaymakers, drinking and laughing, beachwear already beneath their clothes, and the atmosphere was almost infectious. By the time they arrived in Panama City and made it to the hotel they likely wouldn’t see again for another few days, his mind had settled into the tactical groove he needed.

They met their local contact – a thick, giant of a man named Gutierrez with a buzz cut and wide smile – in a meeting room on the first floor, manila folders already awaiting them at the table within.

Gutierrez was a man with spirit, laughing as he introduced himself and apologised for the underwhelming welcome.

“Would have had the full reception laid out for you,” he explained in lightly accented English. “Then the call came in this morning and we had to send our guys on ahead. You’ll all just have to get to know each other on the trek.”

They all took a seat around the large table and Jill began to flick through the pages within her folder. Photographs of makeshift camps in various states of disarray, and a few bodies with wounds that were all too familiar to their eyes these days. There was a map too, of mostly dense jungle with a few key locations marked and co-ordinates scribbled hastily next to them.

“What’s the situation?” asked O’Brian.

This was where Gutierrez’s expression settled into something more serious and somber.

“Three camps destroyed in the last two months. Two dozen migrants unaccounted for, coyotes missing too. Even the drug runners are sending more horses than men these days. It’s difficult to track numbers here, nature of the beast, but even for the Gap this is extraordinary. Local authorities are blaming jaguars, but they mostly keep to themselves unless you bother them. Government has implemented a ban on treks and curbed tourism, but you still get idiots defying them. None missing yet but it’s a scandal waiting to happen. Just this morning the rebels lost contact with one of their camps, that’s what you’ll be looking into first.”

“Why’d the rebels come to us?” asked Chris. “Seems out of character for them to trust someone hired by the government.”

Gutierrez laughed.

“Desperation, my friend,” he explained. “They don’t want to risk their own men. They’re frightened, same as we all are. Had to cut a deal with them just for safe passage through the Gap but the negotiations took days, not the usual months – really shows the state of things. Suppose it helps that a few of our guys used to run in those circles, so they’re more inclined to trust us. If you run into any of them, just keep politics out of it and you should be fine. They know we’re independent at heart.”

Jill felt Chris’s eyes on her for a moment, but he returned his attention to the documents when she did not react. The BCA took who they could get. At first it was survivors of Raccoon City and people wronged by the company in a less public way but the longer this war dragged on the more people it affected and the stranger the origins of their recruits became.

“Any BOW sightings yet?” she asked.

“Not yet, but you tell me it wasn’t one of the Hunter line that inflicted those wounds.” He jabbed a thick finger at one of the photographs before her – a body with three deep welts and one shallow carved from neck to belly, yellow-white bone glistening beneath viscera. “It ain’t no jaguar, that’s for sure.”

They bade a temporary farewell to O’Brian before returning to the airport in full gear and boarding a small, rickety aircraft, flying south over lakes and forests, leaving the urban sprawl of the city behind. The sky was overcast today, threatening rain and blotting out much of the sun. It didn’t feel like Panama looked, that’s all Jill would say.

Chris didn’t say much on the flight, but they had worked together long enough for her to know that it was just his way. He would laugh and joke to no end, but as soon as the mission kicked in it was like a switch would flip. She envied it sometimes, the ability to compartmentalise like that. It was a lot healthier than her way of pushing anything that didn’t seem useful aside, letting it rot and fester until she could ignore the stench no longer. Chris adapted himself to any mission, rearranging his emotions in a more efficient way – she let the mission decide who and what it needed her to be and she’d deal with the rest later.

They touched down in Yaviza, a town touristy in the way jungle gateways often were. They were driven to the centre of town, where a stone-faced man in combat fatigues loaded boxes of supplies into the back of a truck as barefoot local children watched with curiosity.

“We’ll kit you out at base,” Gutierrez told them as they began their journey off-road, shouting over the roar of the engine. “You’ll likely be spending the night in the jungle, maybe the next couple. You ever slept in a jungle before?”

“No,” Chris shouted back. “It like having one of those tapes on?”

Gutierrez found this funny and slapped the side of the truck as he laughed.

“You could say that,” he said. “The guys you’ll be working with are veterans, they’ll see you right. Just make sure you keep your trousers tucked into your boots and watch where you’re stepping. You’ll have antivenom on hand but it’s a long trip to the nearest hospital so it’s best if you don’t let anything bite you.”

“Excepto por un bicho o dos,” laughed the stone-faced driver.

Gutierrez threw back his head and laughed again.

“Yeah, the bugs are gonna bite you, nothing you can do about that. Whole jungle wants to eat you, you just gotta choose which parts you open the buffet to.”

Jill shivered, and felt Chris shift a little in his seat. It wasn’t that they were afraid of anything they could find out there, more that their expectations of things as common as spiders and snakes had changed vastly following their personal experiences with Umbrella. If the virus got into local fauna, who knew what they would be up against.

“How big’s the team?” she asked.

“With the two of you? Four. Got another two on standby but this first step is purely recon. The other guys are our best, been with us since the start. One’s American actually, ex-Navy. Marine or SEAL, I can never remember, but he’s a damn war machine. Other’s one of our ex-guerilla guys, just in case you run into trouble out there. He’s pretty good at diffusing sticky situations so let him do all the talking.”

They drove for close to an hour, winding back on themselves to avoid hazards. The camp was an array of green tents at the edge of the jungle, amongst a sparse spattering of trees. There were already two trucks parked up and a man and a woman leaned against the side of one, barely looking up as they pulled to a stop.

Gutierrez didn’t wait for them, jumped out before the engine was off and was slapping the shoulders of his squad, jovial Spanish exchanged.

“You awake yet?” Jill asked. Chris smiled and bumped a fist against her arm.

“Think so. You ready for this?”

“For what? A trek through literal hell? Of course. I live for this.”

Easy laughter soothed the same pre-deployment fears that had followed them for the last three years. It had got easier, but she didn’t think the last jitters would ever fade. It was best if they didn’t. They kept them grounded, reminded them of what was at stake and how cockiness and overconfidence was sure to get you killed.

“When this is over, let’s take a week just to enjoy the sights? Beaches, cocktails…whole nine yards.”

There was a time when Umbrella had been pursuing her and she had joked with someone that they should find a Panamanian beach and those cocktails the movies made seem so promising, lay low until the storm cleared. Back then, the idea had been appealing.

“When Umbrella is over,” she reminded him. “You know we can’t afford to lose time.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, and she knew he was mulling a rebuttal over.

“Jill, when it’s me saying we need a break you should probably listen.”

She wasn’t getting into this argument again. It wasn’t ‘we’, it was ‘you’. He’d been on her hard these last few weeks, had noticed the sleeping pills and the late nights. It was getting so close to the end – crunch time. He’d seen her burn out often enough on the Force, deliver a solid case, and then spend the next weekend sleeping it off. She knew it wasn’t healthy, but some things just had to be done.

“Let’s just get this done,” she said, and hopped out of the truck before he could respond.

They were led to the largest tent as Gutierrez threw short, sharp Spanish back over his shoulder at their driver. He pushed aside the heavy tarp at the entrance and when Jill followed she was relieved to find that two small fans moved the hot air around within the doorway, affording at least some reprieve from the stifling heat.

There was a single table within, upon which a large map had been laid flat, held down at the corners by various pieces of equipment. Two men leaned over it, pointing along a line of thin red tape to an area circled thickly in black ink. She spotted the American straight away, with his angular features and stocky build. He reminded her of Forest, what with his long dark hair and the sharp focus in his eyes.

When she laid eyes on the other, she felt the room spin around her and stopped dead in her tracks.

She almost didn’t recognise him at first. He was as tall as he had always been, maybe a little more muscular, and the time closer to the equator had darkened his skin a little. He still wore his hair long, but it had been pulled back out of his face with a hairband that matched its colour and fooled her, just for a moment, into thinking he’d cut most of it away. Without the curls she had known falling into his eyes the way she remembered, she had almost written the resemblance off as a figment of her imagination. But she would have recognised him anywhere, hair or no hair.

He recognised her too. She could tell from the shock in his expression, reflecting the same hollow sinking she felt in her own gut. Those dark eyes locked on to hers, didn’t stray even as Gutierrez moved beside him and clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Esteemed guests, these are your guides – Hudson and Oliveira,” Gutierrez said, signalling to them.

She had a voice. Somewhere. She had used it not long ago. But where was it?

“Well, is tall dark and handsome a recruitment strategy or am I just a lucky girl?”

There it was. In humour and denial, where it always hid.

The American laughed.

“Depends if you’re asking now or when we’re back in the city,” he said in a light, husky voice, as he leaned across to table to shake her hand. “And it’s just Billy, by the way. None of that last name bullshit.”

Jill shook his hand, offered her first name, then looked past him and tried for a smile despite the tightness that was slowly spreading in her chest.

“Carlos,” she acknowledged.

“Valentine.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over them all, and it took all of her will not to shiver from the coldness in his voice. Not Supercop, not even Jill. _Valentine_. Whatever part of her had hoped that the past remained in the past, that things had been forgiven if not forgotten, was swiftly muted.

The longing, however, the short, sharp reminder of times she wished she could return to, lingered.

Gutierrez looked from one to the other, then laughed.

“Small world, ey?” he said.

Chris looked lost. His eyes were on her as soon as the contact severed, but she smiled and shook her head – ‘I’ll explain later’.

Gutierrez ran through their objective – to investigate the camp and retrieve any evidence – and talked through their equipment and the basic plan. It seemed fairly straightforward, but these things often were. Throughout it all, Jill focused her attention solely on the Captain but every now and then she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and her mind wander for just a moment, until those wandering eyes snapped away.

She expected Carlos to hang behind at the end, hoped it even. They needed to talk at some point, she had made sure of that. Because she truly hadn’t expected to see him again when she had pulled the trigger three years ago, especially not as a colleague. Not like how they had met. It was the only thing that had kept the guilt away these past few years. It wasn’t a clean break between them, and those jagged edges could cut someone if not filed down.

Alas, he was the first to leave, followed by Billy and then the captain. When she heard the flap of the tarpaulin fall back into place over the door, she let out a trembling breath and braced herself against the table.

A few minutes. That’s all she needed. She wasn’t letting a personal squabble get under her skin. Not now.

“Do we have a problem here?”

She jumped, having failed to realise that Chris had not followed the others outside. He looked at her in concern, closer to her now, and glanced briefly to the doorway.

“No,” she insisted.

“You know that guy…Carlos?”

“Yeah, uh… Remember the Colombian guy I mentioned, back in Miami?”

Chris raised his eyebrows.

“The ex?”

She inhaled, pressed her lips together, and nodded. She expected him to laugh, to scold her for being so juvenile and unprofessional, but he didn’t. He stepped closer, placed a warm hand on her arm and when he spoke his tone was far gentler, with a firmness that helped still her spinning mind.

“Are you okay? Do we need-“

“No! _No_ , it’s nothing like that. I’m the villain in this story, trust me. I just…got caught off-guard. Didn’t expect to see him here, of all places.”

Chris looked at her, a little more relaxed now. She was grateful for his concern, and she would explain the full story to him, but this was neither the place nor the time.

“Can I count on you?” he asked.

Jill smiled, and bumped her fist gently against his shoulder.

“Always.”


	3. Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking at her was like looking directly into the sun.

**October 4 th, 1998. Dayton, Ohio. **

They made it to Dayton just after nightfall, via Jill’s storage unit in Portsmouth and a roadside diner halfway. Appetite was still a thing that felt forced, but a greasy burger really seemed to hit the spot and the _other_ darkness had, at least for now, abated.

Carlos didn’t know what his next move was, and that troubled him. He’d always had a plan, always been running towards something, but now he had no job, his employer probably wanted to kill him, definitely wanted to kill his travelling companion, and he wasn’t convinced that returning to his family wouldn’t put them in grave danger. The only thing he was sure about was that the single success of the last week had been Jill. He’d saved her life, somehow, had gotten her this far and so that was the only thing he knew to do. Keep her safe, whatever the cost. Maybe the other pieces would slot into place along the way.

He had not been home in a few weeks, and his mailbox was jammed full of junk mail. He collected it on their way up, thinking maybe they could order takeout later – he wasn’t sure how much food remained in his cupboards and the thought of serving dry pasta to any guest, let alone one he had developed more than a budding romantic interest in, was quite frankly embarrassing.

He’d not lived there long, only a month or so, and when he had arrived it had been with a rucksack and little else. He didn’t have a lot to his name and that had always worked for him. As he flicked the light switch and illuminated the main room, he realised how the translation of his nomadic lifestyle must have looked to Jill. No pictures on the walls, no ornaments, nothing to make it look actually _lived in_. He scrambled to clear the coffee table of an empty beer can and pizza box and hoped she didn’t look in the direction of the kitchen sink. It was a bachelor’s apartment for sure, but he worried that the clinical lack of personality could come across a little too ‘serial killer’ in the wrong light. She’d been through enough without worrying about his dumb ass.

“You got any more of those on ice?” she asked as he dropped the can into the recycling.

God damn, this woman would be the absolute end of him.

He did, as it turned out. Two more, like kismet.

Beer in hand, she found a corner of the sofa that seemed agreeable and settled into it, her eyes still scanning over every surface.

“It’s not the Ritz,” he said apologetically as he joined her. “But it’s a roof. Only one bed, and it’s just a standard double, but if you feel uncomfortable sharing, I can take the sofa.”

He was asking an entirely different kind of question, phrased as politely as he could. This was his place, and she was a guest of circumstance – he didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable, but he would also be kicking his own ass forever if he didn’t at least try.

She smiled, and looked at him with those sharp blue eyes, and just for a moment that hard expression softened. Jill Valentine was all business, a juggernaut even in a cashmere sweater and novelty socks. It wasn’t an act, more armour, for herself and the people she felt a certain responsibility to protect. She was on guard against everyone, even him, even after what they had been through together. So much anger and pain, rolled up into someone so small and deceivingly delicate. She had yet to learn that she could be herself around him, that she didn’t need to hide and pretend she was anything greater than human, but as amusement spread across her strong features, he felt her take one more step down that road.

“I think we’re past the point of one of us having to take the sofa,” she said with a coy smile.

They hadn’t spoken about last night, hadn’t even acknowledged it. He was fine with that – he knew better than to be clingy, knew what it was and that he had no right to expect anything more from her. But he thought about it. A lot. He thought about how the moment their lips had touched, his eyes had opened; how her kiss had chased away that darkness within him; how he had realised with the crushing blow of inevitability that maybe Tyrell had been on to something. For the first time in his life a woman had him utterly confused and second-guessing himself.

“Just don’t want to make a lady feel uncomfortable,” he said, drinking now from his own can.

She stared at him, long and hard. She was trying to read him, and he found it unsettling, like she could see through his skin and right down to his core, like she could see things even he couldn’t.

“I need to find an internet café,” she told him, blinking at long last. “I need to contact my friends, figure out where I go from here.”

“There’s one not far from here. Or we could go into the city. I’ll drive you. Then…we’ll figure out a plan. For you, for me, for both of us. But for tonight, let’s just, I don’t know…breathe?”

Soft laughter preceded a nod, and this time it was his face those eyes studied.

“Look,” she said. “There’s no way to say this without sounding dumb, but I really enjoyed last night, and I think you did too.”

Enjoy was a bit of an understatement. But he wouldn’t say that. There was no polite way to say exactly how that night had made him feel without delving into emotions that would have frightened them both.

“What gave that away?” he settled on, with a smile for good measure.

“I don’t know where my head is at right now, or where it’s going. But I know that we are good together, and we need each other. Being alone at a time like this is…dangerous.”

There was a lot of thinking going on in her head; he could almost hear the neurons firing. Each word was carefully selected and slowly spoken, having not only passed quality control but several proofreads and official editorial sign-off.

“Is this your way of saying you’re staying?”

“I don’t know. I won’t know, not until I find my friends. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep, but I also know that I feel safe with you, and that’s not something that comes easily to me these days.”

What words would be an adequate response to something like that? She was the most human he had ever seen her, laying herself wide open before him. He wondered if she had ever confessed to needing someone before, saw how her fingers twitched uncomfortably as she spoke.

So, he kissed her, leaned over and took the chance. A soft sigh sounded against his lips and he grew bolder, reaching up to brush a thumb along her cheekbone. It was a chaste sort of kiss, but he felt it throughout his body, wanted more but dared not ask for it.

“I need you,” he admitted. “You’re the only thing that makes sense right now, and I don’t know where the hell to start figuring the rest of it out without you. But I want you too. Would be crazy if I didn’t admit that, ‘cause you’re something special. I don’t got a lot to offer you, but if you want to yell at me and climb on top of me some more while we figure our shit out, I’m A-OK with that.”

“I’m not looking for a relationship,” she warned him. “Or a booty call. I just…”

“I know,” he said. Because he did. They had barely known one another a week, it was too soon to pretend they were a happy couple with a future ahead of them, but they wanted more of an emotional connection than a purely sexual relationship would offer. Perhaps it was best not to put a label on things, to just let them be what they were and watch how they evolved. “Let’s call it one of those things we’ll figure out later.”

A hum of agreement sounded, and she closed the remaining gap between them. The beer continuing to warm in her hand, she rested her head on his shoulder and let his arm find its place around her. That was how she fell asleep that night, and when she woke it would be in his arms, in his bed, and he wouldn’t know but she had already made the decision to stay, even if just for a little while.

* * *

**January 7 th, 2003. Darien National Park, Panama.**

Looking at her was like looking directly into the sun. Carlos thought that he had made peace with the hole she had left in him, thought he had plugged it up and had moved on but clearly that wasn’t the case.

Truth was, he thought he had known a lot of things: who she was, what they were. In the end all he knew was that she had left his life abruptly enough that it had taken him weeks to realise that she was actually gone. And now she was here? What were the fucking odds?

They all made small talk as they began their trek, but he took point as an excuse to not get too involved in the conversation. With one ear open, he heard her tell Billy that she lived in Chicago now, where the BCA’s North American branch was headquartered. Billy flirted in that harmless way he often did when he met a pretty lady, pushing a little hard because it was damn clear to him that she and Carlos had history and of course he had to play fixer.

Throughout it all, Chris kept a wary eye on them both.

Funny, he’d spent months thinking he would one day meet the famous Chris Redfield, but now that he had he wasn’t sure how he felt. She’d talked about him a lot, enough that he had worried in their early days that he had unwittingly become ‘the other man’. She had insisted that he was like a brother to her, had teased him for the jealousy he denied, but of course she disappears one day and when she resurfaces it’s with _him_. Had he been right all along?

He let the emotions burn, until nothing but ashes remained. He couldn’t cling on to them like this, not with so much at stake. And it wasn’t like him to succumb to jealousy, but when you loved someone the way he had loved her, emotions tended not to follow pre-ordained rules.

After roughly an hour and a half of slow walking they decided to rest, needed to keep their energy up in the event that a fight awaited them, and that was when he decided that enough was enough.

They found a clearing, sheltered enough that they could hide from wandering eyes, and defensible enough that they could stand their ground if need be. There were rocks to rest on and the jungle was loud here – always a good sign.

They tucked into their snacks and sipped at their water, allowing the chatter to flow more freely. It was then that Carlos took his chance and settled next to Jill on her rock.

“Hey,” he said, cringing at the word as soon as it passed his lips.

“Hey,” she echoed. She seemed relieved, scooted along a little to allow him space. “Was beginning to think you weren’t talking to me.”

“Wasn’t sure if I was,” he admitted. “Seeing you was…a shock. They said they were sending their best; if I’d known you were with the BCA I could have guessed that was you, but…”

‘But I don’t know a damn thing about you,’ is what he wanted to say, were he not able to hold his tongue. ‘Not really’.

“I guess that’s where you went?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Eventually. Look, you have every right to still be angry-“

“I am. Didn’t realise ‘til I saw you. But that can’t get in the way of this. So…let’s get this partnership off on the right foot.”

She stared at him, and after a moment he stared back, forced himself to. She was damn beautiful, that much hadn’t changed. But she was so much more than that, always had been. She was the only thing that made what they went through in Raccoon City worth it.

“I am sorry,” she said. And he believed her. He saw it in her eyes, felt it in her voice.

‘Then why did you leave?’ he wanted to ask. ‘Why did you take off the way you did?’

But it meant something, after all these years. Because he’d wondered if leaving had been easy for her, and though seeing her hurting like that didn’t please him, it was some small comfort to know that she hadn’t walked away from them unscathed.

When he said nothing, she closed her eyes for a long moment and when she opened them again she was as focused as he remembered her being. Still the same old Jill.

“So, you ended up with the BCA too?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling a little more at ease now that an olive branch had been extended. “After you left, I spent a few weeks in New York. Then, I started to hear stories about what was happening back home, so I split. Got an apartment in Medellin, worked whatever jobs I could find, trying to figure out how I could make a difference. That’s where I met Billy.” He looked over to his friend, deep in an amicable discussion with Chris. “Then, we caught wind of the BCA, got ourselves in and…well, now we’re here.”

Jill smiled.

“Always trying to help people. I guess some things never change.”

He looked at her and realised with a sinking heart that she was right. Maybe she had changed, with her shallower smile and new (old?) partner. Maybe he had too, in his own way. But his feelings for her, though muddied by years of anger and hurt, apparently hadn’t. Because when he looked at her, he saw past all that, recalled the gravity of her and how being caught in it had always felt _right_. He longed for that for just a single fleeting moment, before the waters clouded again and something in his chest twisted until it tore and he breathed shards of glass.

He couldn’t do this.

“No,” he said solemnly. “I guess not.”

* * *

Nightfall came, and they stretched hammocks between trees in an area Billy declared safe and took it in turns to take watch. Neither Jill nor Chris slept all that well that night, but the others assured them the next would be easier.

At dawn they packed up their camp and trudged through a waking forest. Perhaps ‘waking’ was the wrong word. The sounds had never stopped, only changed their melody. It wasn’t at all like the peaceful Arklay forest and comparing the two was like comparing a professional darts game to a British soccer match.

Billy assured them that noise was good; it was silence that you had to be wary of. He’d had his fair share of jungle treks, they had learned. He was ex-Marine, had done tours in just about every country the US Navy operated in and it was clear to see not only why he had been selected by the BCA, but also how he had risen to be one of their most valuable agents.

“So what made you join the BCA?” Jill asked. “And why South America?”

Here, Billy’s good-natured humour dried up.

“I got caught up in an outbreak,” he explained. “Real old one, before Raccoon City made the news. I’d left the Marines by that point, wanted to put as much distance between myself and what happened as I could. Met Carlos on a job, we found the BCA and we’ve stuck together ever since. I joined the Marines because I wanted to make a difference. I failed. The BCA promised I’d have that opportunity with them, and they keep delivering.”

“You were running from Umbrella?” she asked.

“I was running from something, let’s leave it at that.”

The conversation continued amicably enough until it took a sharp turn and deteriorated into a jovial three-way argument of sorts: Army vs Navy vs Air Force. There was no clear winner in the end, and Carlos refused to wade in with his experience.

It was Chris who first noticed a change, as crunching footsteps grew louder, and Jill became more acutely aware of the sound of her own breathing.

“Well that ain’t good,” Billy confirmed as they fell into silence, and the absence of the chittering ambience became clear to all.

“We must be close,” Jill said. “Check your weapons.”

The greenery gave way to a small clearing, where a single ramshackle cabin stood, surrounded by tree stumps and collapsed tents, a burnt-out campfire in the middle of it all. They stood just behind the tree line, observing the scene before them, listening for any sound in the silence.

“¿Hola?” Carlos called, still hidden. “Esto es el BCA. ¿Hay alguien allí?”

The silence swallowed his words, and the camp offered no response.

“Stay behind me,” he ordered. “Eyes open, stay alert.”

They followed him in single file, rifles drawn, spreading out when they reached the campfire. The ashes were cold, Chris called out as he held a steady hand above them. Whatever had happened here, they had missed it by some time.

Despite the overcast sky, there had been no rain since their arrival but the dirt beneath Jill’s feet was damp and squelched audibly as she treaded lightly across it. It was nothing more than a twinge in her gut that brought her attention back to it – there was no real reason to suspect anything, but she had been in enough of these situations, had seen enough weird shit, to know what she was looking at even before the evidence presented itself. So, she pressed her right foot down into the mud and watched as it bubbled up around the rubber sole of her boot, tinged with red.

“Blood,” she called out. “A lot of it.”

Chris approached and his eyes followed the dark line from a collapsed tent to the circle beneath her feet.

“Where the hell are the bodies?” he wondered aloud. “This much blood, no way they walked out of here.”

Jill pulled a disposable camera from one of her many pouches and began to photograph the evidence, from the river of blood to the tears in the fabric of the tents and the personal belongings still strewn around the camp, some damaged, some intact.

“Whatever happened, they didn’t go down without a fight,” Billy pointed out. “Casings looks about right for the weapons the rebels are using. If this was a jaguar it wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“You surprised?” Chris asked her as she passed him on her way to the cabin, knowing the answer. She offered him a weak smile, but expectation didn’t make the reality any more palatable.

‘Another day in paradise,’ she thought bitterly to herself.

The whole cabin smelled of damp and rot, and the floorboards sagged beneath her feet. She found Carlos in the back room, photographing an area behind what once must have been a bed. The wooden frame was snapped clean in half, the sheets tangled around it. On the floor behind it, blood had soaked into the wood, hair snagged on the jagged edge of a floorboard. Four deep welts were carved in the wall above, three more on the floor beneath Carlos’s left foot.

“You know what this was,” he said.

“Hunter,” she acknowledged. “Likely beta, but who knows what they’ve been working on, might have tweaked the design.”

Carlos turned to observe her with an almost clinical detachment as he rose to his feet.

“We’ve seen a lot of hunters,” he said, tucking the camera back into its pouch. “Couple months ago, we found one running wild at an old factory in Paraguay, few months before that another one in the Brazilian Amazon.”

“They have short life cycles,” Jill explained. “And they can’t mate. Means if one runs amok you don’t end up with an introduced species. Don’t act as a vector for the virus, either. Part of their design – they drop them into a warzone, they mop up the enemy, you don’t have to worry about zombies. Less of a clean-up. Perfect attack hound. Perfect for the undiscerning buyer.”

Carlos was staring at her, and she blinked, realising that she had just offered up a whole host of information without even being asked.

“This what you do now?” he asked, a certain sharpness to his voice. “You some kind of BOW expert?”

“Pays to know what you’re going up against.”

He wanted to say something else, she could see it the tensed muscles of his arms, but in the end he kept it close to his chest.

“Carlos!”

They both turned at the sound of Billy’s voice, and Carlos was gone before she had fully processed whatever had just happened.

Floorboards creaked beneath his heavy footsteps up ahead and when she followed him out into the open, Billy was inspecting the bark of a tree on the edge of the clearing and Chris was photographing it, using the former’s hand as a reference for size.

“Look,” said Billy. He gestured first to three deep welts around the thick tree trunk, then pointed at the ground beside it. “Something came through here.”

Jill didn’t see it, but Carlos crouched low and nodded after a moment’s inspection.

Chris nudged her as the others began to move slowly forward, weapons drawn.

“Found tracks,” he explained. “Something got away.”

She checked her weapon, flipped the safety off, but her mind was on the grenades at her belt – she’d faced enough of the Hunter line to know that the weapons they had would be frustratingly low-impact. For a moment she wondered in irritation why, if that line was so prevalent in this corner of the world, had they not been equipped with the right weaponry from the start.

The sounds of wildlife remained absent as they pushed further into a dense section of brush. Jill saw it now – the way vines fell limply against the flanking trees, as though torn abruptly by some passing force. As they moved forward, bipedal footprints became clear, pressed into soft soil, and then-

“Fuck me,” said Billy.

Tangled in vines up ahead, sprawled on the forest floor, lay the carcass of a Hunter.

It was as large as the ones Jill recalled from Raccoon City, its scaly hide a deep shade of green. But the armour plating around its face was more substantial, the carapace thicker. There were no immediately visible wounds, but it lay there, unmoving, clawed hands splayed outwards at its sides.

“This what you saw in Raccoon City?” Chris asked.

“No,” replied Jill and Carlos in unison.

Chris was not an unintelligent man, but he could be slow on the uptake where certain personal matters were concerned. But here, he caught that moment, digested it and realisation sank in. Jill could feel his eyes on her even as she focused on the carcass before her.

“The, uh, ones in Raccoon City were…” Carlos began.

“They were betas,” Jill finished. “Gammas, too. This…looks similar to a beta, but the plating is different.”

So Umbrella were not only continuing production of the Hunter line, but they were actively pouring more time and money into their research? The audacity of it made her sick.

“We should call this in,” Chris said. “Science guys will want to take a look at this.”

Jill stared down at the Hunter still, taking in every line, every variation of colour in the leathery hide. Billy and Carlos checked the perimeter but found no further tracks that weren’t human. One Hunter couldn’t have taken out an entire camp of armed rebels, she thought. Even taken by surprise, with basic weapons, the sheer numbers would work in favour of the human side.

Something wasn’t right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has stopped by and shown your support - your comments mean so much to me <3.
> 
> Next chapter is kicking my ass, along with SAD, neither of which is particularly helping with being creative at the moment. Usually I am one chapter ahead (so I should be into Ch5 when I post Ch3) but I'm still tackling Ch4 at this point - it is about 90% done so I am still hoping to get back on track and stick to the posting schedule, just rest assured that even if it does come a little late it is on its way!
> 
> Stay safe, everyone!


	4. The River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She broke your heart, huh?” Billy asked when he didn’t rise to the bait.
> 
> “Maybe I broke hers?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is late. This was a difficult one to write for reasons still unknown, but it was the editing that sucked in the end. I'm still not 100% happy with it, especially the last section, but it's got to the point where I need to get it out there because between editing this chapter and real life I am finding no time to write the next chapter and that's kind of getting me down because dammit I want to write! Sometimes you just need to accept that some things are never going to be perfect and be okay with them as they are :). 
> 
> I hope everyone is taking care in this crazy world. Just checking in to let you all know you're still awesome <3

**March 27 th, 1999. Baltimore, Maryland.**

Chris Redfield, like many others, learned of the destruction of Raccoon City through the worldwide news coverage that followed. He didn’t speak much French, so he missed the hours of pre-emptive narration on the evening of September 30th and woke on October 1st to images of a crater that had once been his home.

It was like waking to find oneself missing a limb. He hadn’t really known what to do, half-convinced he was still dreaming, so had stared at the changing images and solemn newsreaders for close to an hour before he thought to pick up the phone.

“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” Barry had said. “Can’t believe it.”

“All those people…” Rebecca had sighed.

There was another number he had dialed, before the others. The first one that came to his mind. He had punched it into the keypad of his plastic shell of a phone and was greeted with the steady beep of a line refusing to connect. There would be no answer. All that was left of the phone on the other end was a melted lump of plastic buried beneath the rubble of an apartment building he had once known well.

It brought a question into the calls that followed, one that he asked with a dry throat, pounding heart and incessant whining in his ears.

“No,” Barry had answered, solemnly. “Not a word from either of them.”

“She was planning to leave yesterday,” was Rebecca’s assurance. “I…I’m sure she left at the first sign of trouble. She’s smart. She would have known what to do.”

Perhaps. But neither of them knew Jill the way he did. She wouldn’t have taken off, not if she thought she could help. She took the ‘protect and serve’ thing to heart, would have been right there in the thick of it, not running and hiding.

He made some calls, placed Brad amongst the missing and tracked Jill to a quarantine camp near Athens, but by the time her name turned up she had already been checked out and let loose upon the world. She was alive, though. That was something.

He had every intention of contacting her, but shit hit the fan pretty soon after. Forced to flee his apartment, he had succeeded in getting only a single, short email out to an address he hoped she still used: _‘Heard you got out. Stay safe. Don’t follow me. Lots of work where you are – I will find you’_.

It was his intention to return to the USA as soon as possible, and he had managed that in mid-December, only for a series of events so bizarre he still wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined the whole damn thing to pull him away again. It was mid-March by the time he made it back to shore, staring out at the tides that had tossed him about for so long, and began to plan his next move.

Through all this time, he thought of her. He didn’t worry, oh no. Jill Valentine was not someone you needed to waste your energy worrying about. Her behaviour could be worrisome at times for one who cared about her, sure, but she could handle herself. But none of this really made sense without her. They were no longer partners by profession, both of them at the mercy of their whims, but they had been through too much for the connection to fade with the more physical ties of an employment contract. Whatever the next step entailed, she needed to be there for it. Put simply, he missed her.

So, he had emailed her again at long last, apologising for his absence and proposing a long-overdue reunion. He wasn’t even sure if she would get the message, had failed to track her down any way he knew how and hoped that she still checked her inbox regularly.

‘Yes,’ her reply had read, coming through after two days of obsessive checking of his inbox. ‘I can be in Baltimore on Saturday at 11am. Meet at the bus station?’

And there he was, two days later, watching the buses come in, rising every time he saw a short, slight lady with jaw-length brown hair. In the end he checked the stand and waited outside in the cool air, rocking on the balls of his feet.

When he saw her, stepping down on to the pavement and retrieving a suitcase half her height, the weight that had been crushing him these past few months lifted. She extended the handle on her case then looked up, and their eyes met.

With the suitcase trundling at her side, Jill made a beeline for him, wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tighter than he had ever been hugged in his life.

“You made it,” he said with a soft sigh, after a moment to hold her and actually convince himself that she was here and that all truly was right in the world again.

“Always do, don’t I?”

Her voiced was weighted by something unspoken, her tired eyes almost on the verge of tears. She looked exhausted, and not just in the way someone who had just spent eleven hours on a bus would be.

She looked up at him with a mix of relief and sorrow, placing a hard kiss on his cheek when she pulled away.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”

She blinked and let out a little “Hmm?”, like she always did when caught off-guard.

“Yeah, I…uh, said some hard goodbyes in Charlotte. Just thrown me a little, I’m fine. I can’t believe you’re here! Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you? I was beginning to think you didn’t want to be found.”

“It’s a _very_ long story. Uh, I have a car outside. How about I buy you a coffee and we talk on the way to the hotel?”

“We staying in Baltimore?”

“I guess that’s for us to decide.”

There was a smile when she regarded him this time.

“You saying you don’t have a plan?”

“Finding you _was_ the plan. Nothing else really mattered until I did.”

They talked for hours, in the car and then in the twin room he had booked in anticipation of her arrival. They talked about the days after he had left, and her house arrest; the slow-burn of the outbreak and the last few chaotic days; her infection and rescue at the hand of one of the UBCS soldiers she had briefly worked with; the asshole that had destroyed the vaccine; the quarantine camp; the last few months on the move, never staying in one place too long lest Umbrella catch up to her.

Eventually, the pull of exhaustion became too much for them both and in the early hours of the morning they laid down to rest.

Chris didn’t sleep much that night, held on the edge of relief by adrenaline and the same demons that had been clawing at his feet since last July, renewed in energy since the events of December. But Jill didn’t sleep either, though perhaps she didn’t realise that she was not alone in that. He was awake when she retreated to the bathroom, locked herself inside for an hour and then emerged red-eyed and puffy-faced.

When they woke the next morning, there was no hint of abnormality, no sign of trauma in her cheery persona. Like a rubber band, she had snapped back. If it weren’t for the pressure behind his own eyes, he would have been sure he’d dreamt the whole damn thing.

In the end, he put it down to almost six months fighting this war on her own and promised himself that he would never let that happen to her again.

* * *

**January 9 th, 2003. Darien National Park, Panama.**

They returned to camp around mid-afternoon, hauling the surprisingly sturdy Hunter carcass with them, wrapped in the remains of a tent. The smell became noticeable roughly an hour from base, as heat became an accomplice of time and the flesh began to rot, not visibly but certainly noticeably.

When they finally made it back, they were met with three more vans and two more tents, one of which was a stark shade of white, with extra plastic sheeting hanging over the entrance. It was here that they were directed to drag the carcass, escorted by an over-excited individual in a surgical mask, lab coat and neoprene gloves.

Chris had expected another venture into the jungle, but while they were promised that one lay on the horizon, he was assured of at least one night in a hotel bed in Panama City before the fact. The science team wanted to take the Hunter apart first, learn exactly what they were dealing with, and they didn’t like to be rushed.

There were a lot of things that bothered him. The lack of bodies, the single Hunter. And then there was Carlos.

Yeah, he knew who he was now. He’d heard the name before but how many Carlos’ were there in the world? He hadn’t immediately pieced it together but there was no reason for him to have before now. If their immediate assumption of the direction of his question about Raccoon City hadn’t been enough, their joint answer was.

Billy and Carlos left to debrief Gutierrez after their arrival back at base camp, and Jill had found herself in conversation with one of the other agents, so he made straight for O’Brian, who waited by one of the trucks, taking a long drag from a half-spent cigarette.

“You look like you’ve got a burning question, Redfield.”

“Need a favour,” he said. “Ops Manager stuff.”

O’Brian chuckled. He knew what that meant.

“Okay, shoot.”

“Oliveira and Hudson. Think you can get their files?”

By files, of course he meant their official ones _and_ whatever other ones he could find.

“Figured you’d ask that,” O’Brian said. “Already took the liberty – for them, and the others. Pays to know who you’re working with, after all.”

Chris smiled. They had worked together for long enough that O’Brian was always one step ahead of him, he should have known that by now.

“You find that Oliveira was with Umbrella?”

O’Brian eyed him warily, suspecting where this might be going.

“UBCS,” corrected O’Brian. “Corporate cannon fodder. But yeah, he was part of the Raccoon City deployment, escaped just before the cleanse. Before that, he was a mercenary of sorts – worked with a lot of guerrilla groups, stuff that any other org would have omitted but in this line of work I suppose it helps. Prior to that, mandatory service in the Colombian Army, took off as soon as his contract was up. He’s been with the BCA since ’99, not long after we founded it. Brought down a lot of bad people, saved a lot of innocent lives. Younger than you’d expect for someone with that kind of history.”

The pieces were slotting together exactly how he had expected them to.

“Interesting thing,” the older man continued. “I went back through some of our own intel, turns out he was on Umbrella’s hitlist back when they still kept them. Their intel suggested he had connections to ‘surviving S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine’. Don’t think he’d have been on the list if it weren’t for that – Umbrella weren’t exactly precious about hunting down UBCS stragglers that kept their heads down.”

Bingo.

Chris let out a victorious harrumph which turned into a little laugh that wasn’t entirely void of humour. What were the chances?

“I think he’s the guy she got out with,” he said. “The one that gave her the vaccine. In fact, I’m positive.”

O’Brian seemed surprised but did not address it.

“If you’re right, at least we know we can rely on him in a pinch. Did find an interesting thing on Hudson’s file, though.”

“Oh?”

“BCA file suggests a history with the US Navy – Marine Corps. But I checked and they have no record of a William Hudson matching his description serving at the time he claims he enlisted. More than that, I can’t find anything on him at all other than what’s in his BCA file.”

That was odd. It was clear that whatever Billy was, he was ex-Forces. Chris had known enough in his time to know when he was talking to one. He knew things, understood them the way a civilian never could.

“Change of name?”

“Perhaps. He was born in Hudson, Michigan, could have taken it as a nom de guerre. Could be nothing, but just keep an eye on it.”

The journey back to Panama City was a tense one, and as soon as they had alighted the plane the party split with the only heartfelt farewell coming from Billy. If anything, Carlos seemed eager to get away, and though she never said as much Chris could tell that it bothered Jill.

Budget dictated that a Twin played host to both American agents, and when they returned to their room their belongings were exactly where they had left them two days ago: dumped unceremoniously on the beds.

He let her shower first, and when he emerged from his own it was to find her fully dressed and fixing her now-dry hair in the mirror.

“Didn’t pack any makeup, did you?” he teased.

She jumped at the sound of his voice, and her brow folded into an expression of irritation.

“Why would I? This isn’t a vacation.”

“I don’t know. But you seemed pretty deep into styling your hair there.”

Jill pulled back from the mirror.

“You got something to say?”

“Do you?”

She laughed at the seriousness of his expression and shook her head as she rose to her feet, smoothing her palms down over her jeans.

“So a girl got caught trying to look good in front of her ex,” she said. “Like that’s a world first.”

“It is for you.”

There was a stiffness to her shoulders that told him she was unsure if she wanted to play this game. That was how he knew he had her. Jill Valentine was impeccable in so many ways. To see her at war with herself, unsure how to act around a friend as close as he; something was up.

He glanced to the scar on her left arm, a barely perceptible twist of flesh that could have been mistaken for a gunshot wound. It was a personal issue, yes, but he needed to drag it out into the open, needed to understand what had happened in those months he was gone and how it would affect the days or weeks ahead of them, because they couldn’t afford to make even a single mistake here.

“I thought I’d heard you mention the name Carlos before,” he said. “Then I remembered – it was back in ‘99, back when you were telling me how you survived the impossible.”

Jill’s right hand raised, pressed to her scar without thought. She looked away and that was it, all pretense of defense was dropped.

“Yeah, it’s the same Carlos,” she admitted. “Figured he’d stay in the fight, I just never thought… Haven’t seen him in a long time and I, uh- To be honest, I never expected to see him again.”

No. There was more to it than that. Chris hadn’t thought much into it at the time, but she had only said his name once or twice in her tale, and when she had it had been spoken so fast, without a hint of eye contact, that it was clear now that there had been weight behind it, that maybe he was the anchor that had been dragging her down in those early days.

“I never asked about the time after Raccoon City,” he said. “Figured you told me everything I needed to know, but I also figured you were alone in that time.”

A sigh, like air let out of a balloon. She lowered herself to the edge of her bed, signaled to his opposite. One of those, huh?

“We escaped together,” she explained. “When we left quarantine, Umbrella were on our trail, so we stuck together. Figured it was safer. Look, you know how it feels to come out the other side of something like that. You cling to what you can. For us, that was each other. Nothing much made sense, and everything hurt, but the company…that was…it helped.”

Her eyes softened as her thoughts drifted back to those days. He’d seen her smile a lot these last few years, but he’d never seen her reach a state of happiness that surpassed anything in Raccoon City, before Spencer Mansion, before all of this. Now, he saw her in uniform, behind her old desk, laughing at some dumb joke Joseph had told. He saw the ghost of a girl he had once known, long thought to be dead. But only for a moment.

“It was just about the sex at first,” she said. “Catharsis. I’d been alone for so long it felt good to just be with someone. Given time…” She laughed bitterly. “But that was the one thing we didn’t have. It was doomed from the start. No time for love when you’re at war.”

“You were in love with him?”

“I could have been. Maybe I was. I don’t know. Didn’t stick around long enough to figure it out.”

She was lying. Not just to him, but to herself as well. She kept forgetting that she couldn’t hide anything from him, not after all this time. But he didn’t point that out. It absolutely was not what she needed right now.

“Chris, I never told you because we were history by that point. Didn’t seem relevant at the time. I’m not hiding anything. If you’re wondering if we can trust him, we can. If you’re wondering if my head is going to be in the game, it is, and I’m honestly a little insulted that you’d think any different.”

Chris looked at her, and he knew that was all he was getting. But of course, he had to try anyway.

“You said you were the villain in this story? Those were your exact words.”

Jill rose to her feet, looked him dead in the eye.

“ _That_ ,” she warned. “Is getting too personal, even for us.”

* * *

**March 26 th, 1999. Charlotte, North Carolina.**

Carlos slept a lot easier these days. They still lived week to week, renting whatever shithole nobody else wanted, but Charlotte was different. Here, they’d managed to secure an apartment that sure, was cheap and rented on a weekly basis, but was also the kind of place they’d have settled in if they’d had a choice. In fact, they were going into their third week in the place and there’d been no sign of Umbrella spies or other trouble afoot. Finally, they were somewhere they could breathe so maybe this _was_ settling.

Jill’s sleep came in fits and starts, worse now than it had been since the beginning. There were fewer nightmares, but she had started taking sleeping pills again, sometimes even running a while on the treadmill or abusing the punching bag in the corner before bed. It happened from time to time, but this episode had dragged on a little longer than the others. He worried about her but expressing that just made her feel more vulnerable so he simply strove to be there for her whatever way he could, making the little things easier so she had space to tackle the rest.

She was gone when he woke on the morning of March 26th, but he didn’t realise immediately just _how_ gone. Sometimes she would go for a run if she woke before him, sometimes she would head to a bakery a few streets away and the smell of coffee and freshly baked pastries would wake him. Sometimes he would wake to the sound of the shower, the door wide open: an invitation he always accepted.

Today, there was no shower, no pastries, and her running shoes weren’t by the door, but neither were her boots, or her coat. Again, this did not immediately strike him as odd, so he rolled onto her side of the bed, the sheets cool against his skin. He lay there for a moment until the niggling feeling in the base of his skull grew barbs and forced him out of bed.

Her suitcase was gone.

That was the first thing that struck him as odd. No shoes, no coat, and now no suitcase.

“Jill?”

Nothing

Urgency took him to the bathroom, to the single toothbrush that rested in the holder on the sink.

The niggling spread, carving an icy trail down to his chest, where his lungs shuddered and seized against the cold.

Had they found her? No, they would have taken him too. And they wouldn’t have taken her things, wouldn’t have cleared the apartment out like that.

With a breath held amidst fear that settled a little differently now, he walked back to the bed and saw what he had missed: a folded slip of paper resting against the varnished pine. With trembling hands, he reached for it, knew already what awaited him but welcomed that grim reality through the door nonetheless.

_‘I’m sorry.’_

* * *

**January 9 th, 2003. Panama City, Panama.**

“She’s pretty.”

Carlos looked up, pulled from his thoughts by the echoing of Billy’s voice around the small elevator.

“Who?”

“Your girl.”

“She ain’t my girl.”

“Yet you immediately know who I’m talking about.”

Carlos let out a growl of a sigh and shook his head. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to get into right now. They were still technically on the clock, could be heading out into the jungle again at the crack of dawn. He just wanted to get downstairs and drink his way through this month’s paycheck at the overpriced bar, maybe even find a darkened corner to sit and brood in for a while. Maybe then he would let himself think about Jill Valentine.

“She broke your heart, huh?” Billy asked when he didn’t rise to the bait.

“Maybe I broke hers?”

Billy actually tilted his head back and laughed at that, a hearty bark of hilarity he then tried to suppress out of respect for his friend.

“Sorry,” he said, fighting back ripples of mirth. “You, break a heart? Carlos, you’re my man, I love you, and I’m sure you’ve broken many hearts in your time, but I doubt you had a say in a single one of them.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve seen how easily you pick up girls. How gently you let them down too. They’re practically apologising for coming on to you. I don’t know how you do it, but a man like that breaking someone’s heart? Nah. That kinda heart stares down the barrel of the gun, it doesn’t pull the trigger. She did _you_ dirty.”

There was a compliment in there somewhere, but Carlos couldn’t quite wrap his head around what it was supposed to be.

The elevator doors pinged open and they stepped out onto the gleaming tiles of the hotel lobby. There were already bodies milling about outside, dressed to the nines and ready for another night in Panama City.

The bar was a large, ornately decorated area, bathed in bright light that reflected in pinpoints on the rows of glassware behind the bar. Carlos could already feel the hole this place would burn in his wallet. There were plenty tables free, and he recognised a few of the faces as BCA staff evidently with the same idea they had. There wasn’t much more they could do when they needed to remain contactable and close by. Maybe when it was all over they would celebrate the way they always did when closing a successful mission, but the atmosphere here was respectfully muted for now.

“They seem to know their shit,” Billy said as they waited for the bartender to finish making what looked like an entirely superfluous cocktail. “The NA guys, I mean. More than the Europe guys we had in Guatemala, anyway.”

“My mom would have been more helpful than the Europe guys,” Carlos laughed. “But yeah, Jill is…well, you’ll see. And they were the same unit, went through the same shit so I suppose he’s the same.”

“I thought she was Army and he was Air Force?”

“I’m talking back in Raccoon City. They were cops, worked on the RPD’s Special Tactics team together.”

Carlos felt the tension that seized Billy’s muscles. It was that same reaction he displayed in their usual haunt back in Medellin sometimes, when he hadn’t quite drunk enough to push him to the top of the well he had fallen into.

“S.T.A.R.S.?” he asked.

“Yeah. That mean something to you?”

Billy exhaled through his nose, looked off down the rows of liquor bottles against the back wall.

“Met a S.T.A.R.S. girl the night I escaped,” he explained tersely. “Different one. Shorter-“ he raised his hand to a level maybe a couple inches shorter than where Jill would have stood “-with short brown hair, I mean real short. She’s the reason I’m here. She’s the one that pulled the trigger on Billy Coen. Never would have even thought of that myself. She was real smart, y’know. Still has my old dog tags.”

As reminiscence passed through his words, Carlos saw his mood lighten, saw the tension ease from his shoulders. He had known about the girl from the train of course, but hadn’t known she was S.T.A.R.S.

“Something about S.T.A.R.S. girls, huh? Hoping for a reunion?”

Billy shook his head impatiently and just like that whatever had lightened his mood fell away.

“I’m saying your girl and her guy might know who Coen is. Might feel some kinda obligation to turn him in.”

Carlos raised his eyebrows. Billy’s concern was genuine. It had taken a solid month of the kind of friendship that had seen them in more trouble than anything else for Billy to spill the finer details of his past. In fact, it hadn’t been until Carlos had admitted his and the former Marine had realised that the stakes were equal for the both of them in this corner of the world that it had all come spilling out. He’d always known that his past would catch up to him one day, and he had told Carlos that he just wanted to try and do as much good as he could and have as much fun as was possible before that happened.

“No,” Carlos said. “Can’t speak for Chris, but Jill ain’t like that. All she cares about is whether you’re a good person. And S.T.A.R.S. is like this…fellowship. If this other girl trusted you, that will be enough for her.”

Billy looked uncertain.

“It’s not like you actually killed those people,” Carlos pointed out. “You were framed. They know something about being betrayed by your CO, trust me on that one.”

He believed it, and he hoped that Billy would take his word for it. The BCA as a whole may not have known about his past but Gutierrez did and the man was loyal to a particularly brutal fault – even if the Americans did want to take him home, they’d have to get through the Captain first, and stronger men (and BOWs) had tried and failed.

The bartender appeared, having finished with the plant-like arrangement he been preparing, and took their order – “two beers, whatever you’ve got on tap”. At that point, someone else appeared on Carlos’s other side and offered a polite greeting.

“Seems we all had the same idea, huh?” Chris asked with a stiff sort of chuckle.

“You kidding?” said Billy, snapping back to his usual cheery self, feathers suddenly unruffled. “This job, bar tab comes under medical expenses.”

He then looked at Carlos with an expression he didn’t give the younger man time to decipher and nodded towards a table at the back of the bar before accepting his beer.

“I’m gonna say hi to Jill. Assuming we’re drinking together?”

Chris smiled at him, didn’t look bothered either way.

“Sure,” he said. “The more the merrier.”

As Billy left them to it, Carlos reached for his wallet.

“I’ll get these,” Chris said, waving a hand in the air and catching the bartender’s attention before he could accept Carlos’s dollars. “And two more, please.”

Carlos looked down at the frothy head of his beer, then up to the man at his side.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“Yeah I do. Figured you were the guy Jill got out of Raccoon with, which means I owe you a hell of a lot more than a drink.”

Carlos blinked at Chris, ran the words over in his mind a time or two before accepting them. For what it was worth, they seemed genuine, and when Chris looked up at him it was with an amiable smile that didn’t feel counterfeit.

He was a handsome kind of guy, Carlos realised. Close to Billy’s age; old enough to carry an air of experience but young enough that the lines hadn’t settled in yet. He wore his dark hair short, with a spray of stubble that read more ‘I just spent two days in the jungle and forgot where I packed my razor’ than a conscious fashion choice. He was tall too, about the same height as Carlos but still an inch or so behind Billy, and his body was hewn from the kind of muscle one got on the move, suggesting little time for the gym sessions both Carlos and Billy were sure to indulge in a few times a week. Jill had always said that he was focused, kept his mind on the job and sacrificed what he needed to in order to get shit done. She was the same, despite what initial impressions had suggested in their short time together. They were well suited to one another, and Carlos found that maybe if his paranoia and jealousy had proven true and he was looking at her other half, he was someone she would at least be happy with. At the end of the day, he wanted that more than anything.

“Thanks, then,” he said when no other words came.

He reached for his beer but realised that his options now danced between staying here and making small talk with Chris or venturing to the table and doing the same with Jill, only with the added social lubrication of Billy Coen.

“We appreciate you coming to help out,” he said, knowing in the end which option was more appealing. Because in the end, yes they had to work together but he wasn’t quite ready to act like nothing had happened between the two of them. He was ready to be her colleague, being her friend was a whole other matter.

* * *

Jill had dug many rivers in her life, some little more than streams, others the kind that split cities in two. There were bridges over some, others were narrow enough to step over and more still flowed unsteadily but were tucked away where they were of no harm or consequence to anyone. But there was one with waters as white as bone that cut straight through the centre of her peace, roaring audibly wherever she ran.

She had tried to build a bridge over it once, and the moss-covered bricks still lay abandoned by the bank. When the first had been placed and the next just wouldn’t sit right she left them with the hope that she would return to it one day, but without any real expectation that she ever would. On the other side there was only a shadow, hovering behind the mist that rose from the surface of the water, pacing the banks aimlessly. Sometimes it would look at her, and she would stare back, but she never could hold that gaze long, would always be the first to retreat.

It was a river she could no longer remember why she had forged, recalled only the animalistic urge to protect herself, to lock something firmly away so she could ignore it and move on with her life. Maybe it wasn’t a river at all, but a moat, one that locked her in as much as it kept anything else out.

Three years later the waters raged still, and now the banks were spilling over. And she recognised the shadow, always had, but now that it sat opposite her in a very real hotel bar in a very real city, she was unable to look away.

She thought she would be stronger than this when the moment came, but the water at her feet threatened to rise, to drown her if she didn’t build her way out, and she felt panicky, the palms of her hands cold but damp as they gripped a rapidly emptying glass.

Chris and Billy were deeply engrossed in a conversation about something she didn’t really understand, and she took the opportunity to place the first brick, resting it gently on her side of the river.

He, Carlos, lived in Medellin still, she learned, owned a crappy apartment but had finally saved enough money to move his mother somewhere nicer and was currently saving to move himself up the coast. He didn’t like Medellin itself much, but he loved the people, had a lot of old friends nearby, and it was convenient for work.

He didn’t ask anything about her or what her life had become, she soon realised. And whatever hope had filled her after their chat in the jungle drained away just as rapidly as he repeatedly tried to pull himself into the conversation evolving next to them, edging ever further away from her.

They were colleagues, nothing more. It shouldn’t have hurt the way it did, but she found herself longing first for something a little stronger than beer, then for the warm bed that awaited her upstairs. She contemplated leaving, because maybe he just needed time and space, but when Billy announced that he was off for a smoke and Chris accepted his offer of one, they were left alone in the loudness of the bar without any real say in the matter.

“Can we talk?” she asked. Straight to the point. “Doesn’t have to be now, but I…I’d like to clear the air between us.”

She hadn’t expected him to laugh. But that’s exactly what he did.

“Ok, that was a bad choice of words,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. For that and for…well, everything. I don’t want you to think that leaving was easy for me. It wasn’t. In fact, it’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Carlos looked away from her, stared into his half-empty beer and thumbed the glass at its base. Funny, he was so easy-going, so laid back that she had always found it difficult to imagine him holding a grudge. But here they were, three years later, and he was struggling to find words for her, something he had always been so good at.

“I always wondered if you’d left on a whim,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d woke up and realised you’d made a mistake and that was it.”

“No!” she insisted. She reached for his hand, but he pulled it back, and tried not to let the hurt show. What did she expect?

“Then why did you leave?”

Here it was, the moment of truth. She…froze. And he noticed.

“Forget it,” he sighed. “Look Jill, we need to work together, and you know we are good at that but beyond that…”

He wanted nothing to do with her, he just couldn’t say the words. But that was something, right? Part of her wanted to respect his decision, but another saw it as an opportunity. She couldn’t let this be, not when she owed him so much.

“Chris contacted me,” she said. His eyes snapped up to meet hers. “That’s why I left. He was back in the US, Umbrella had kidnapped his sister, he’d been through hell…and he wanted to meet up and continue the investigation where we left off.”

Carlos blinked at her, waited for more but she didn’t offer it. He would know that wasn’t the full story, but she hoped that maybe it would be enough that it would open up a channel where she could one day spill the rest.

He let out a sharp huff of air through his nose – almost a laugh, but the rest of him couldn’t quite follow up on it.

“Always figured that was the case. So what, you turned your back on us because your old partner was in town?”

“I didn’t turn my back on us-“

“I woke up one day and you were _gone_ ,” he snarled, voice raised enough that a couple on the next table looked briefly towards them in irritation. “Gone, Jill. Without a fucking word, just a note with two words on it. You fell asleep in my arms and then I woke up and you were _gone_ and even after three years that still fucking hurts. Everything we went through together, everything we sacrificed, and you couldn’t even say goodbye. How else am I supposed to take that?”

She was placing bricks and he was kicking in the riverbank on the other side. Captain Wesker had often lauded her on her diplomacy, but where was that now?

“I don’t have an excuse for how I left things,” she admitted. Her throat felt dry and her eyes wet. “I never should have done that. But I was in a dark place at the time, Carlos, you know that.”

“So was I. You knew that too.”

“I wasn’t thinking straight, and I did try to find you again, in October. I tried to track you down, but you were gone.”

“You could have found me if you wanted to, Jill. You’re too tenacious to give up when you hit a dead end.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

He seemed annoyed, sat back in the plush cushions of their booth and looked at her, took in every detail, every nervous twitch. And suddenly she saw their roles reversed. She wasn’t the one screaming at him, desperate for a reaction now – he wanted her to fight back, to argue, to try to absolve herself of responsibility. Maybe a couple years ago she would have. But she was tired, always in shadow, and seeing him again reminded her of the one good thing that had come out of the whole Umbrella mess and how they had fucked her up so badly that she had ruined even that.

“I really cared about you,” he said. His words cut through her in a way they weren’t intended to, cleaved right through the bone and buried themselves in the thick muscle of her heart. “Pretty sure I loved you, actually. So, I…I wish you’d told me if you were unhappy. Because maybe we couldn’t have worked through it and what we had was doomed from the start but losing you from my life completely wasn’t something I ever wanted.”

Something flourished beneath the pain, something pleasant.

“I was never unhappy,” she said, softly, hoping it at least offered him something while she figured out just what had woken within her. “Not with you, and I don’t ever want you to think that I was.”

Carlos drank from his glass, for the first time since they had been left alone. The anger, at least, seemed to have settled, but the hurt still threaded through every movement, through the glassiness of his eyes, felt no better.

“So you want to pick up where we left off, is that it?” he asked.

She didn’t know, truly. She wanted to feel the way that she did with him, wanted that peace, but that river still threatened to drown her.

“I’m under no illusion of that being possible,” she said. “And I know asking you not to hate me is probably more than a little brazen at this point, but I’d like us to be friends. I was never all that good at showing it, but I really valued that. You. Us. Whatever form that took.”

Another pause, longer this time, then a sigh.

“I don’t hate you. Yeah, I’m angry, hurt, and honestly still a little confused. But I don’t hate you.”

“Then can we start over?”

“Maybe.” A soft laugh. “I never really thought how I’d feel if I saw you again. What I’d say. Turns out I’m not as over it as I thought I was, so yeah, maybe we can be friends, but I need some time.”

Time was the one thing she knew she could give him.


	5. Solstice

**October 26 th, 1998. Somewhere in Illinois.**

Jill pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders and shivered in the malignant chill that was spreading throughout their rental car. It had been a long day, a longer week, and she was done with all of this. They’d spent more on gas than on food and she wondered how much longer their savings would hold out if they kept this up. She didn’t exactly want to have to find work somewhere, didn’t like the risk or the distraction that carried with it.

Outside the car, rain pattered down from a darkened sky and bounced off the hood, catching the harsh lights of the motel parking lot in a diffusion of yellows and reds. She warmed her hands against the a/c unit pumping pitifully warm air into the vehicle, breathed on them, then resorted to shoving them into her armpits.

With a weary sigh, she watched as Carlos emerged from the lobby, shaking his head solemnly as he approached the car.

“They said there’s another motel a couple hours’ drive north with rooms,” he said, pulling down his hood and shaking a hand through his hair once he was safely inside. “Apparently there’s some kind of event in town, everything closer is either booked out or several hundred dollars a night.”

He tried to stifle a yawn but it broke free regardless. He’d been driving for hours now, a marathon broken only by a truck stop snack break about twenty miles back.

“She did give me a number.” He pulled a sheet of crumpled paper out of his pocket. “We could call ahead to the other place, check they definitely have a spot?”

There was enough light inside the car for her to see the shadows beneath his eyes. It was clear to see that he barely had the energy to walk back from reception let alone drive deeper into the night.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“You won’t make it another couple hours, neither will I. We didn’t survive all the shit we’ve been through to die because someone fell asleep at the wheel. Let’s just…let’s find a quiet spot, park up, get a few hours then tomorrow we can check in somewhere for a few days, rest up properly.”

He wouldn’t argue. She knew that, as sure as she knew he would never admit to how tired he actually was. He trusted her, implicitly, and if she thought something was best then he wasn’t going to argue unless he knew she was wrong.

So that’s what they did, drove for another half an hour, found a quiet spot down an unmarked road out of town and turned off the engine.

It still rained there, heavier than at the motel, and maybe she would have once found the sound soothing, but all it did now was send another chill through her bones. It wasn’t rain, but a burst fire hydrant, a sprinkler in some abandoned restaurant. It was blood against white tiles, brown skin, and a pair of glasses that reflected her own horrified expression.

“Hey.”

She looked up at Carlos and tried for a smile she didn’t truly expect him to buy. He didn’t, but he didn’t afford her the opportunity for an argument like Chris always did, didn’t push too far into her comfort zone and force her to own up to things even she didn’t fully understand.

“How about we get in the back?” he suggested. “Won’t be as comfortable but will be easier to stay warm.”

“You’re not the first guy to hit me with that line,” she teased. “Bet you’re even going to try to put your arm around me.”

Carlos sighed.

“Damn. You got me. Was going to hold your hand and everything, really besmirch your honour.”

She climbed into the back seat and so too did Carlos (albeit with much less grace), and the sound of the rain filled the silence within the car.

She shivered again, only a small, involuntary shudder, but he noticed, and before she could lie and assure him that she was fine, he had pulled off his leather jacket and was offering it to her.

“C’mon,” he argued when she glared at him. “I’m warm-blooded, I don’t get cold easily.”

“I’m from Illinois, you’re from Colombia,” she pointed out. “Which one of us is more used to the cold?”

“I’m from Bogota, I think you overestimate how warm it is there. Now take it.”

“Carlos-“

“You can take my jacket or cuddle up to me, your cho-“

“Sit back.”

He looked at her.

“ _Sit back._ ”

He obeyed.

“Leg up, on the seat.”

Though unsure exactly what she was getting at, he obeyed again with a lopsided smile, and when she laid herself against him, stretched out on the seat, resting against his chest, he sighed happily.

Then, he pulled his jacket over her.

“Carlos,” she warned.

“It’s over both of us now. This is how we compromise.”

“I thought the cuddle was the compromise?”

“Oof, straight through the heart.”

She laughed quietly into the soft folds of his hoodie. She could feel his heat through the soft grey fabric, and the scent of him seeped through, enveloping her. It was something she had never really noticed before, but she did now. It was warm and earthy, unfamiliar yet comforting in a homely kind of way. She nuzzled further into him, wanted to breathe him in and let that warmth chase away the deeper chills and thaw the marrow of her bones.

That was when it hit her.

This was comfort. Not the kind that a warm hoodie or soft bed would provide. Not even the type found after a hard fuck, when the anger fell away and a moment of peace was granted. It was comfort in the company of another human, peace in the knowledge of their continued existence at your side.

She liked this man. Of course, that was never under question, but it was like peering into a pond to realise that you’d somehow walked to the ocean. It…felt nice.

The gentle thud of his heartbeat lulled her into a state of meditation, but not quite sleep. It drowned out the din of the rain and she tried to focus solely on its rhythm, hoping to find that ever—elusive sleep. Instead, her mind wandered to the arm around her waist, to how perfectly they fit together and how she didn’t hate that half as much as she convinced herself that she did. At some point, he moved his other arm to briefly stroke her hair before his hand came to rest on the arm that wound around him. His head rested against hers now too – had it always? If she asked, would he hold her a little tighter? Or would he judge her, sending that boldness retreating to the depths it had become lost in somewhere between the Arklay Forest and here?

“Stop thinking so much,” he said, his voice a rumble that echoed out from the cavern of his chest, louder in the confines of the car.

“I could have been asleep. And dreaming.”

“Jill, I can feel how tense you are. You need to learn how to shut off.”

She considered arguing, pointing out that he knew exactly how he could help her shut off, but found that the resistance wasn’t there.

“Maybe you’re right,” she acquiesced. “Maybe we should take a few days off.”

She felt his entire body tense at this, felt his head move.

“Are you okay?” he asked, only half-serious. “Really, you think we should take _time off_? Miss ‘we have a job to do’?”

Jill pushed herself as far upright as she could manage without casting his arm aside. She needed him to hear her, because she didn’t think she’d come this close to spilling her guts again without some measure of duress.

“We do have a job to do,” she said. “But neither of us is going to be any good at that job living off truck stop food and sleeping in a freezing cold car.”

She could have left it there, but that sense of security she had been lulled into had lubricated her social graces, and she wasn’t yet convinced that it was an entirely false one.

“Is it selfish of me to want to spend some time with _you_ too?”

Carlos blinked at her, then a smile that lit something that rose within her spread across his face.

“Not selfish at all. If it is, well…I’d say you deserve to take a few things back after everything this year has taken from you.”

She kissed him before she even knew what she was doing. She had to. She didn’t know why but felt that she needed to move the Earth to make it happen.

She’d never _kissed_ him before, not like this. A kiss had always led to or followed something more or been little more than the tender press of lips to a forehead or mess of hair. She’d never kissed him for the sake of it, for the sheer joy of emotion and the desire to simply taste him. That was the only desire that burned through either of them in the coldness of the car, tempered to something deeply sensual. They parted with shorter pecks, the brush of noses, and his fingertips dancing down her cheek.

He seemed like he wanted to say something but caught himself short. And there were not words within her that felt appropriate. So, she laid her head on his chest, hummed when he pulled her closer to him, and at long last drifted off into an easy, dreamless sleep.

* * *

**January 10 th, 2003. Panama City, Panama.**

Carlos knew he would dream of her, given a soft bed and enough time to slip into something meaningful. It wasn’t a memory that had waited for him, of course, but a fabrication: an argument, where her words cut through him and he learned an unwelcome truth that left him watching her leave again. Because yes they were talking again, but now he wasn’t entirely convinced that her amicability and willingness to apologise was all that helpful in the end. It would have been easier to be angry at her. Anger, he knew how to deal with. He didn’t even know what to call this.

Billy was already awake and fully dressed, and the sight made Carlos sit up suddenly, and glance pleadingly towards the alarm clock.

“You didn’t oversleep,” his roommate said. “I just…couldn’t.”

The white LED display read seven thirty – early enough for a short snooze but what was the point? He was wide awake now.

“Gutierrez called a meeting for half eight,” said Billy. “I’m gonna go grab a coffee and…some kind of pastry. Want one?”

“Black, please. Uh, and something with chocolate.”

As the older man left, Carlos forced himself to his feet and into the shower, setting the water as cold as it would go in the hope that the shock would force his hazy mind back into focus.

The conversation hadn’t been all that bad, had it? She was diplomatic, as always. She listened to him, tried to understand, _apologised_.

Why had she apologised?

There was a time when being around her was enough for everything to make sense, as though she was a lens that focused the chaos around them. She still did that, still focused the things he had been struggling with into one clear image, still forced him to look at harsh truths without even realising it. More than that, he wasn’t sure if he minded. Because clarity was better than chaos in the end, however painful the focused image might be.

He too was dressed by the time Billy returned, stinking of cigarette smoke and brandishing two Styrofoam cups and two greasy bags. They made short work of the pastries but carried their coffees still as they made their way downstairs.

That’s where he saw her, leaning against a pillar and conversing with Chris. She was dressed as casually as she had been the previous evening, in a pair of slim jeans and an oversized shirt that fell loosely over her hips. Blue, of course. It suited her like sunlight suited the day.

He did not need Billy’s guidance this morning. Whatever their conversation the previous night had achieved, it at least stripped him of the anger he had felt being around her, three years in the making. Because she didn’t have to apologise. She didn’t have to ask him to start over. She could have sucked it all up, got the mission done and then vanished into the night again. Whatever her reasoning had been, there was at least a part of her that wanted something to do with him and wasn’t that the thing he had longed for in those first lonely days? Not her love, not her warmth, but _her_ , even as a silent presence at his side. And now, she greeted him with a smile that told him she at least was still happy to see him this morning.

“Sleep okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, actually,” he said, unable to hide a telling smile of his own. “Bed always beats hammock.”

There was a rustling at his side and for just a moment his attention was diverted to a small carton now in Billy’s left hand as his right dove into his back pocket.

“You two go on ahead,” he said, pulling out a small metal lighter. “Chris?”

“Why the hell not,” Chris agreed, his eyes sliding sideways to where his partner stood.

“I thought you’d quit,” Jill argued.

“I have.”

He offered no more, before he followed Billy towards the revolving doors at the front of the hotel. Jill opened her mouth to say something before her eyes rolled back and she laughed out a sigh.

“He has quit,” she pointed out. “Took him forever and I got _this_ close to actually strangling him.”

“Billy quit three times already. Every time I catch him starting up again he just says ‘it’s cheaper than a therapist’.”

Jill laughed at that, a sweet sound that warmed him more than the coffee in his hands. With a brief nod, he signaled towards the direction of the meeting room and they started to walk at a pace one could barely describe as ‘wandering’.

“He seems like a good guy,” Jill said. It took his brain a moment to catch up, to realise who she referred to.

“Billy? Yeah, he is. Likes helping people…fixing things.”

“Even if it’s a lost cause, huh?”

Her boldness never ceased to amaze him. She was digging and wasn’t even being subtle about it. Loathe as he was to admit it these days, wasn’t that how he had ended up falling so hard for her? Achilles had his heel, Carlos Oliveira had strong, bold women.

It made him think. The ball was in his court now. Jill was a proud enough woman that if he kicked it to the side or let it sit there then she’d understand that the game was over and that would be it, they would be friends. But he would have been lying to them both if he’d insisted that the other ship had sailed. Maybe he was opening himself up for more hurt, but she was worth the risk, wasn’t she?

“I see no lost causes.”

She hid her reaction well, with a long sip from her cup. This time, he was the one emboldened, so he thought ‘fuck it’ and threw everything on the table.

“You and Chris been together this whole time?”

Their pace had slowed now that they approached their destination and could see BCA staff up ahead, but at this point Jill stopped completely.

“We’re not _together_ ,” she said. “But yeah, we’ve been working together since the beginning.” She paused, took another sip of coffee. “But your jealousy is duly noted.”

Nervous laughter escaped his throat, but he caught it, channeled it into something that sounded a little more intentional.

“No jealousy,” he insisted.

“Not even a little?”

“You could do a lot worse. Have done a lot worse.”

Jill’s brow furrowed in a look of pained contemplation as she tried to work out which one of them he was insulting.

“What happened to living in a-“

“I’m begging you, please don’t finish that sentence.”

“ _Cold, cruel, Carlos-less world_ ,” she sang.

It wasn’t possible to cringe any harder than he did in that moment. He actually felt his gut shrivel up and a tiny bit of his soul escape his body.

“You really thought that was going to impress me,” Jill sighed.

“Was just trying to make you smile. It worked. And what about you? _‘Oh, Carlos you’re not staying here all alone are you? How ever-_ Ah!”

She thwacked his arm with surprising force and laughter spilled from them both.

This was…nice. It was a comfort he hadn’t felt in a long time, achieved by letting his guard down in a way he had never really intended. The realisation almost forced those walls to snap back into place, but he caught them, wondered what the harm was. Because it seemed that the only one capable of soothing the pain she had caused was her. Maybe the wounds weren’t healed but having her back in his life was a balm he would have been crazy to refuse. If this was what letting her back in felt like, then maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

A door opened up ahead and the other agents began to file into the room.

“C’mon Supercop,” he said. “That’s us.”

* * *

Supercop.

He’d called her Supercop.

That was all she could think about as they sat at opposite sides of the table, waiting for the others to slowly file in. Well, not _all_ she could think about. There were the gentle waves of his hair, dark against bronzed skin, falling into his eyes as it always did. There were the scars on his arms, the ones she couldn’t recall him having back in ’99, slivers of white beneath soft dark hairs. There was the strong line of his jaw, the enviable length of his lashes, and the muscles that filled out his shirt very well these days. Yes, she thought about a lot of things, but she was sure they were all tied intrinsically to that word and the voice that had spoken it.

 _Supercop_.

Chris teased her when he arrived, catching her in a daydream. She could smell cigarette smoke on him, but it wasn’t on his breath, she noted. She would address that later. For now, she settled for elbowing him.

Gutierrez was the last to enter, already dressed in fatigues. Jill couldn’t imagine the man wearing anything else. He was built like a tank, with the added decal of scars across the left side of his face, down his neck and on to his forearm to really drive the point home. He looked, quite literally, like the world had chewed him up and spat him back out. They all had stories, and she had tried to get Gutierrez’s, but he had just laughed in that jolly way he had, pointed to his scarred face and an eye she could see from that distance was made of glass, and said “let’s just say they weren’t so subtle about what they took from me”.

“We have developments,” he said now, cutting straight through the low murmur of conversation on his way to the point. “As you may know, Hudson, Oliveira and our new American friends found this in the jungle yesterday.”

There was a buzz followed by a click as he flicked to the first slide, and the muted tones of a familiar BOW flashed upon the white wall behind him.

“The rebel camp was found in a state of disarray-“ _bzz-chk_ “-and our rebel contacts have confirmed that those known to have been operating out of that camp are unaccounted for.” _bzz-chk_ “Ferreira performed an autopsy on the creature immediately after it was returned to camp, but found nothing we haven’t already seen in the Hunter line. Except for this.”

_Bzz-chk._

The next slide showed a small, smooth lump of metal, approximately 11mm long and 6mm wide, according to the scale placed next to it. From it, a single, thin wire twisted and coiled back into itself in loops of dirty silver.

“The hell is that?” Chris asked.

“We don’t know,” Gutierrez admitted. “But we have our theories. Autopsy report showed no defects in the corpse, no wounds, no breaks in the skin or the plating. This piece of…whatever it is, it was in the brain. Along with-“ _bzz-chk_ “-this.”

Another lump of metal, this one twisted and melted into an undefinable shape.

“This one was found close to the first, and we do know what this is – a tracking device. A fried one, anyway. The flesh around the first device was charred and burned.” _bzz-chk_ “Now, we don’t have a lot of information on the intended anatomy of the Hunter line - closely guarded corporate secret - but Ferreira reckons this area is pretty vital on most living creatures. Long story short, we’re looking at the cause of death.”

“What the fuck?” Jill whispered. She leaned forward, squinted at the image on the slide. It looked, quite frankly, like part of the brain had been blown away from the inside. It would explain the lack of wounds – the Hunter line had skin and plating so thick basic weapons were largely ineffective against them. If you were going to kill one, this was probably the best way to do it.

“You saying this was some kind of fail-safe?” asked Billy.

Gutierrez looked at him.

“That’s what it looks like. We think whatever it was must have fried the tracking chip when it went off – the chip was buried deep, could have migrated. Would explain why it was left behind.”

“Then this is all planned,” Jill said. She could feel all eyes on her as she spoke. “You said it’s been mostly rebel camps that have been targeted recently – armed militias. If they wanted to make a statement they’d attack villages, settlements, tourist hotspots. They’re not sowing panic, they’re gathering combat data. It explains why they took the human bodies, too.”

“Why would they destroy their own product?” asked the agent beside Carlos, a lady with long dark hair braided over one shoulder. “They’re hemorrhaging money as it is.”

“The Hunter line is mass-produced,” she explained. “And extremely cheap, it’s why we see it more than any other BOW. Euthanising them is likely easier and cheaper than re-capturing.”

“But they’ve attacked so many camps. They must have euthanised dozens at this point. Where are they getting that kind of stock?”

Jill looked to Chris, no longer sleepy but alert and focused. It was exactly as they had feared. The main labs had downsized, the smaller ones shut, but they were still mass-producing these lines. There had to be a central facility somewhere. A BOW manufacturing plant. The idea seemed absurd but if all roads led to Wonderland then maybe Alice wasn’t so mad after all.

It was O’Brian that voiced this to the group, running through their intel, linking it to what they had found in Panama and speculating on what it could mean for the BCA as a whole. Gutierrez nodded every so often, taking in his words, and she could already sense a plan formulating in his mind.

“So we’re looking at arms dealers,” Chris speculated. “Not rebels or terrorists. Professionals. If we can find them, maybe we can find something to lead us back to whoever is leading up production.”

“You’re on the mark there, Chris,” O’Brian agreed. “But, we already have a name to work with. Now, I don’t have any fancy slides but I’m sure you’re all familiar with the name Sergei Vladimir?”

It was Carlos that responded to this, first with a scoff and then with a bitter statement.

“He was commander of the UBCS. Only saw him once, at the training camp. Whole thing was his baby, from the outfit itself down to the expendability of the soldiers.”

“You were familiar with the Monitor programme?”

Carlos shook his head grimly, and Jill bowed hers as a ripple of assent passed through the room. It was a sliver of intel they had dug up in early ’99 – a unit within the UBCS itself, operating secretly to both collect combat data and instigate scenarios in which the brutality of the BOWs could be tested. It was clear even without the evidence that Nicholai had been a Monitor, regardless of who else was paying him. Carlos had kicked himself for not seeing it sooner, for not saving lives lost to such greed, but how could he have known? A unit designed to eat itself alive from the inside. It was unprecedented even for Umbrella.

“I’ve spoken to my contacts at the FBC and they have evidence to suggest that after the Raccoon City Incident Vladimir returned to Russia. They suspect that he has been leading a covert section of Umbrella’s Russian arm ever since. No evidence, of course, but given what we know about the man it is likely something tied closely with their military interests. If Umbrella are responsible for whatever is going on here, it’s likely to lead back to this man. With his power and influence if we get Vladimir we strike a crushing blow to the only viable Umbrella enterprise remaining.”

There they were. The stakes. The winning ticket that could finally silence them. But what did they have to go on? Little more than hearsay and hunches.

Through another hour of slides and discussion they deduced that the culprits were operating out of a camp within Darien National Park itself. It was the only thing that made sense what with the frequency of the attacks and the speed of the clean-up. Perhaps it was arms dealers, or maybe just a clean-up crew and a few handlers, but anything or anyone they could get their hands on might lead them further up the chain.

So, they were told to prepare

Eight of them would go this time – Chris, Jill, Carlos, Billy and four other agents. They really weren’t pulling their punches, Jill decided, but action felt good and the more there were the greater their odds.

Funny how that didn’t make her feel any more confident.

* * *

**January 10 th, 2003. Yaviza, Panama.**

The Americans had been in town for a few days, with the very specific instruction to lay low and await orders. So that’s what they did, in a run-down holiday apartment in Yaviza, pretending they were yet another addition to the rising wave of angry tourists holed up in the town.

Kimberley Dennis felt out of place, even amongst present company. There were a lot of things she didn’t understand, and her new partner was certainly one of them. The reasoning for his appointment wasn’t clear other than ‘it was mandated for his employer’s support’ and that frustrated the hell out of her. In all manners of this mission the FBC had been as vague as they usually were, though at least Lansdale had been straight with her, however ‘off the record’ their conversations may have been.

She had joined the ranks of the FBC soon after its inception, caught up in the wave of anger that had rippled out from the ruins of Raccoon City. The grave of her parents. She had thought then that maybe the FBC had what it took, that maybe they could be the buffer between corporations like Umbrella and the lives they destroyed. But she had known so little of politics back then and what had once been a vision seemed little more than an afterthought now. If the lack of funding wasn’t enough, the only government interested in letting them do their damn job was their own. What the hell were the oft-favoured BCA capable of when it came down to it? What could a private outfit and a little blood money do? And why were those with the power to change things happy to let them play out this way?

“Will you sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

Kim turned to her partner. He’d spent the last hour staring at the screen of his laptop, waiting for a message that fell less likely to come by the hour. He had all the conversational ability of a dry potato and the personality to match and she wished not for the first time that she had been sent on this mission alone or at least with someone a little less…him.

“We could have had the job done by now,” she pointed out. “Lansdale send over the intel yet at least?”

He nodded.

“The BCA found a hunter carcass in the jungle,” he explained, squinting harder at the device before him. “They’re briefing them now, think they’re heading back out later this morning.”

“How the hell does he know all this?”

“He’s friends with the Ops Manager overseeing this mission. They share intel, it’s how these things work. Now will you please _sit down_.”

She did, but after a long enough pause that it didn’t seem too much like she was following an order.

“This Ops Manager know we’re here?”

Her partner laughed.

“’Course not. Our instructions are to stay clear of the BCA. They can’t know we’re here, remember.”

She laughed too now. That was the kind of partnership she understood – share and share alike but keep your secrets.

“Ah! Here we are.”

He sat upright, waved her over and tilted the laptop screen so that she could see it. There was a single picture, layered on top of what looked like a dozen different windows. It looked to be a satellite image of the national park, one area highlighted by a blue box.

“What am I looking at?”

“Based on the last few attacks, they’ve narrowed down a list of possible targets. There are a few smaller settlements in this area – most are abandoned, but there’s a small village and a few active camps. Most likely targets for the next attack. They’ve sent co-ordinates and…” he clicked back onto an email message and sighed “…yeah, our entry point is several miles north. If we set off now that should give us maybe an hour to poke around before the BCA reach that area.”

“They been shipped out already?”

“I doubt it, but their camp gives them a better trajectory. If Lansdale figured this out I bet his friend has too. We’ll start with the village – feels like a more likely target than an armed rebel camp.”

Kim wasn’t so sure, but this guy seemed to at least know his shit, so she fell in line behind him. She’d been on a jungle trek before, back when her parents were still alive and she was in high school. Her memory of it was that of a reluctant child pulled away from a normal summer with her friends, but it filled her with a tinge of sadness now, before that familiar roar of anger returned.

“Would be able to do so much more if they’d just let us in,” she grumbled to no-one in particular. Her partner heard this, however, met her eye.

“Let go of that anger,” he warned. “Anger makes you reckless. We can’t afford that. One wrong move and-“

“You think I don’t know the stakes? I lost people, you know, I know what our fuck ups cost.”

A flash of anger flickered across his youthful features, but he bit his tongue. He was insufferable, really, didn’t rise to anything. Some goddamn government-issue robot. People like him, they shouldn’t be in positions like his. It was just another job to him, the arms dealers just another mark to capture. How could he take the mission seriously if he didn’t _understand_? He was part of the same damn problem that kept the FBC under-funded and on a leash.

She expected him to chew her out, but he didn’t. So, she shoved her gear back into the single holdall she had brought and waited for him, turning her mind solely to what needed to be done.

“You have your orders,” she said, before they left that dingy room behind them. “I have mine. So let’s just get this done, and let’s get it done properly?”

A smile cracked on his otherwise stone-like face. Maybe there was a real human being beneath that mask after all. Or was he just humouring her now?

“Yes, ma’am.”


	6. Twice Shy

**December 2 nd, 1998. Detroit, Michigan.**

They were at war. Jill was a fool to have forgotten that. And what had it taken for this amnesia to take hold? A calm week and a few thoughtful dates?

Carlos had tricked her into the first one, though he denied any duplicity, had claimed she was the one who had seen it as a date when all he had wanted was a sit-down meal and a few drinks. The second was her idea, and she made a point of being up front about it, something that amused him to no end. And he’d been romantic enough that she’d said yes when he proposed a third, not paying much thought as to what any of it meant.

Today was…the fifth? A daytime date, devoid of risk and casual enough to maybe be written off as dinner between friends.

But it hadn’t been between friends and they had realised a beat too late that they had another problem altogether – they were being followed.

So there they were, running through an abandoned industrial site, outnumbered and very probably cornered. It was the kind of sloppy work Wesker would be on her ass about, the kind she tended only to deliver when distracted by something completely outside of her control.

The walls of the old warehouse they fled through were adorned with graffiti, what little glass remained sitting within windowpanes like unsheathed daggers. The rest crunched underfoot as they darted along the wall, voices calling out behind them, baying as they were.

“Out the other side,” Carlos urged. “There’s another building, we can cut through then double back.”

They were probably waiting at the exit, trying to flush them out. He was right – the only feasible way out was right through them. And if they did make it out, what about the car? She tried to recall if they had left anything of importance within it, if they could afford to abandon it. Then she thought of her clothing strewn across the armchair in their apartment, wondered how long it would take to shove it all back into the suitcase and make their escape. Reckless. Next time, she’d make sure it was always packed away before they left, just in case.

They darted behind a large metal contraption and a bullet thudded into the rusted pipes above them. There was an access tunnel beyond, and they ducked into it. Carlos waited to push her through first, then turned once he was clear and pulled on an empty duo of lockers that rested beside it, the resounding clang echoing around them as it fell to block their pursuers’ path.

Here, they took a moment to breath. Just a moment. Jill’s sides ached, and she tugged at the neck of her coat, sweating despite the manifestation of her breath before her.

“There could be another way in here,” she pointed out. “Avoid the doors. Maybe we can find an entrance to the vents? They look big enough to crawl through.”

Carlos squinted at one particular vent across the way, partially blocked by debris. He was broad-shouldered, but he would fit. Just. He would have to.

“Let’s go.”

The voices continued in the distance. How many were there? They had seen at least five. Chris would be impressed, she noted. Five agents, for little old her. They really were getting desperate.

They ran, turning corner after corner, trying to move unpredictably. Soon, the voices ceased, and the silence was gutted by the clamor of a nearby explosion and the clatter of metal.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Carlos gasped. “Move!”

He didn’t need to tell her. She was already on the move, squeezing through a partially-collapsed door into a smaller room. This area was in a far graver state of disrepair. There was a vent, but the cover had slipped forward and was pinned down by a chunk of concrete with sharp twists of metal protruding. Part of the wall was missing, and the sharp scent of cold air hit as they approached it.

“Too open,” she said, peering through the fissure. “Leads back around into the yard but we saw them go that way. Help me get this moved.”

She stepped over the debris and started to lift the edge of the vent cover. Rust flaked off in gritty chunks beneath her fingers, concrete crumbling around its reinforcements as the large slab atop it moved precariously. It was only when Carlos joined her that they succeeded in moving it, his strength far outstripping hers.

“Ladies first,” he said. She didn’t argue. Leaving him behind even for a moment didn’t sit right with her, but there was no way she could have held the blockage aside for him.

In the hallway behind them the voices drew nearer. She could almost make out clear words now. The vent was damp and musty, the smell of dead wildlife drifting to her from somewhere ahead.

“Please not the sewers,” she whispered. “Don’t lead to the fucking sewers.”

She pulled her legs clear, hauled herself into a kneeling position and turned back to help prop the grate up.

The grate that slammed back into place with an audible crack.

“Carlos!”

He was looking at her, down on one knee, unsmiling.

No… He wasn’t… He _wouldn’t_.

“Follow that route,” he said, so calmly she felt panic rise within her. “I’ll meet you outside. Stay low-“

“No! You lift this back up, you get-“

“Get out of here.”

“Don’t be a _fucking hero_!”

She pushed on the grate, tried to lift it back up but from this side and this angle she just couldn’t get purchase.

“Jill, if they think we went through this way they could surround us or gas us out. I’ll lead them away and I’ll shake them off. I’ll be okay, trust me.”

They were drawing closer. Their words were clear now, barked instructions that would precede their entrance into that room, bring them closer to him.

She couldn’t leave him. But she couldn’t stay here, couldn’t be the reason they got him. So, she bit down that rising fear and turned back towards the stench, pulled herself far enough ahead that the light behind her started to dim and then-

“Where did they go?”

“I saw them come in here!”

“That way.”

Her arms were shaking, hands too. If she could stand she knew her legs would have trembled also. Stupid fucking _men_ and their stupid hero complexes.

The tremors stayed with her as she pressed on. The metal around her was cold, her breath white in the air. There was nothing but darkness, and the chitter of something within it. As she pulled herself along, something brushed past her arm and she jumped, banged her elbow against a side panel.

A sliver of light appeared, casting a line of blue across her arm. The panel, it was loose! She pressed on it gently at first, surprised to find that this was enough for it to wobble and for the tell-tale _ting_ of a bolt hitting concrete to sound on the other side. After another moment’s work it lurched forward and she caught it just in time, laid it gently on the ground before clambering over it and emerging into a windowless room.

Somewhere nearby she heard the rush of water and followed the sound through a door to her right, down a short flight of stone steps, to what she recognised from her last days in Raccoon City as a sewer maintenance hatch.

“Fucking perfect,” she hissed.

It was unlocked, and she was able to soundlessly slip through, the rubber soles of her boots squeaking slightly on the last rung of the ladder before she hit damp concrete.

Below her, water roared, covered by a series of rusting grates. She couldn’t hear much down here but on the plus side that meant they couldn’t hear her either.

She allowed herself a moment to breathe, but her chest tightened and when she raised a hand she saw that it trembled.

What the fuck was he thinking? They both could have got through. Now she had no idea where he was, or even if he was still alive.

The tunnel stretched on to her left and to her right, the air a little fresher to the latter. There were more doors this way, inevitably leading up. She didn’t know how far she had crawled, or where they would lead, but the other option was to head deeper into the sewers – away from the pursuers but also away from Carlos.

She tried the first door – locked. The second was heavy but opened with enough force behind it, straining against the stone. Beyond was an office that seemed barely inhabited – a recent calendar hung on the wall but there were no signs of life, all machinery dark and silent. On the other side of the room, another door led to another staircase, this time heading up, and she followed it quietly, placing a hand on her bag, nudging the zip along silently with her little finger, lest she needed to reach for her firearm.

At the top of the staircase another series of rooms led outside, and there was no sign of the pursuers. She didn’t recognise the architecture, theorised that she must have emerged out of the other side of the site. Here, she could hear traffic nearby, signs of life that sounded a little more hopeful.

Another sound reached her – the scrape of metal against stone – and she snapped around, fingers finding her gun within the confines of her bag, to see Carlos stumble out into the open, as surprised see her as she was him.

“Oh my god,” she breathed. It took a moment for her grip to loosen, her hand to slip out of her bag, and she ran to him.

He threw his hands out, caught her arms, but they slid through his grip as she pressed herself into the broadness of his chest and wrapped her arms around him.

All at once, her energy left her and she felt a traitorous sting in the corner of her eyes. Perhaps she would have cried, had a wave of anger not rushed in to fill the space the fear had left. When she pulled back, she grabbed his lapels and shook him as vigorously as her trembling hands would allow.

“What the _fuck_ ,” she hissed. “Are you braindead? What the hell were you thinking-“

“-using myself as bait?” he finished. She heard his words twice; once in the warm tone of caution he used then and there, and again in a tone far angrier, tinny through a radio he had once given her. The hypocrisy struck her before he could point it out.

“We are a _team_ ,” she insisted. “We get out together or we don’t get out at all.”

“You can yell at me later,” he insisted. “Right now, we need to finish that getting out of here thing.”

That’s what they did, slipping off-site and into the streets, shirking away from the eyes that took in their disheveled countenance. They watched their car for a short while, hopped in only when they determined that they weren’t being followed, and returned to their apartment long enough to pack up before heading back out onto the road.

The promised conversation came, but only when they were clear of the city, bowing to hunger at a truck stop and checking in to a motel as darkness threatened to fall. Carlos had left her for a short while, driving the car to the drop-off point hastily agreed with the rental company and picking up another from a new company from the same location.

She’d not left the room in his absence, had only showered and then sat there in her robe until the door opened again and he stepped through.

The time alone with her thoughts had been troubling, but it had been enough for the anger to burn away, if not for her to fully understand what it meant. She had thought of Chris, throwing himself between the Tyrant and her and winding up with some nasty wounds and two broken ribs for his effort. She had been angry, yes, but not like this. That fear didn’t hold a candle to this. Sure, her relationship with Chris was one built on self-sacrifice, on putting your partner’s needs above your own, but she was so sure that was the relationship she had built with Carlos, whatever happened in in the lonely heat of the night.

This wasn’t like the fear of losing Chris. It wasn’t like the reality of losing Joseph, or Forest, Brad Richard, or any of the others. She knew the risks, Carlos did too. Either one of them could be captured or killed, and she was so sure she had made peace with that.

When Carlos tossed the new car keys onto the table, she finally left her sanctuary on the bed and approached him, not quite sure which angle she was going to approach this from.

“I don’t want you to do stupid shit like that,” she said, opting for the calmer route. “So you have to promise me that was a one-off. Your life is no more or less valuable than mine.”

“Keeping you safe is what matters,” he said.

There it was again, that weird _thing_ in her chest. It swelled, sharpened, and she coughed it up, as she always did, in the form of an argument.

“I am not some fair maiden that needs protecting, Carlos.”

“I know you’re not,” he agreed, amused at the mere thought of her as anything other than the knight squaring up to the dragon. “But you’re the smart one. You’re the one with the history they’re trying to bury. I’m just a merc who took a bad paycheck. You’re the real danger, and they know that. I know that. It’s why I need to keep you alive long enough for you to get back to your friends so you can end all this.”

“You don’t need to-“

“I _know_ ,” he insisted, and raised a hand to gently brush an unkempt strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s a redundant fucking job, I know that. But I want to do it, ‘cause it means I have an excuse to insist you need to keep me around.”

He had a habit, she had realised, of diffusing arguments before they had even started, before she even knew what was happening. She had brought it up once and he had merely told her that life was too short to stay angry, that the world was violent enough without letting that creep in to their personal lives. She was the opposite, picking fights to distract herself, rather angry than in pain. Maybe she had finally met her match. Maybe that was why they worked so well together.

“You don’t need an excuse,” she said. “I don’t just need you around, I _want_ you here. I’d have thought you’d figured that out by now.”

There was a pause as he considered her words. He had moved closer, the hand that had brushed aside her hair slipping down to her shoulder.

“When did _you_ figure it out?”

“Just now.”

She moved her hands, placing one flat on his chest and ghosting it up towards his neck, where her palm sat flush against his warm skin, her thumb brushing through the coarse hair along his jawline.

“Please don’t be reckless, not on my account.” Then, for the sake of honesty: “I don’t want to lose you.”

He waited for her to kiss him, and she did, desperate for a way to convince him that this was a personal request, without leaving her heart so utterly exposed. They were past the point of being friends with benefits, she realised that. She also realised that she wanted this, more than she had wanted anything in a long while. It was no longer a desire to feel human, but desire in itself.

It was a relationship, no matter how much she denied it. And it was the closest to being alive she had felt since this whole sorry saga began.

* * *

**January 10 th, 2003. Darien National Park, Panama.**

Heat. Billy remembered heat. The blistering kind. The kind that soaked through every layer of clothing, brewed the kind of stench that took more than a single shower to shift. He remembered the water running out, remembered when the first man fell and how they breathed easier as they decanted his supply into their own. In the end, only four of them remained. What the guerrillas left, the fever had taken and in the end even he wasn’t so sure he would make it out that time.

This was a walk in the park compared to that, every trek before and since had been. But the fear remained, carved into his bones. It was PTSD for sure. Where other vets would have been sent to a shrink and then on their way he had been thrown in a cell they would only pull him out of to deliver a death sentence. Yeah, he’d dodged that bullet, but at a cost so high some days he wondered if it was worth it.

Loathe though he was to admit it, he didn’t do well in groups. Gutierrez understood that, and he was happy enough with the two-man cell he and Carlos had become. They delivered results that most teams could not and that was all their CO cared about in the end, but outside pressure had evidently played a part this time.

Too many people. Too many opportunities to fuck up. Too many lives at stake.

“Hey!”

The sharp hiss of Carlos’s voice broke through the veil of reminiscence.

“You still with me, buddy?”

“I’m good.”

“Just take it easy, yeah? One thing at a time, keep your wits about you.”

He appreciated Carlos, he really did, but sometimes he wished he wasn’t so damn concerned with helping others.

“I’ll be fine,” Billy insisted. “Just…something don’t feel right. Think maybe there’s too many of us? Don’t like it.”

“I’m with you there, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt.”

He was in a much better mood today. Had been since last night. Whatever words had been exchanged between him and Jill had obviously done the trick and Billy was glad for that. He just hoped that they made up for real before he smoked his way to an early grave to facilitate it. He considered asking him about it, sensing an opportunity for distraction, but there was that thing about times and places again.

They pushed on for a while longer, tuned to the sounds of nature around them. There was rustling in the trees overhead, and in the brush in the distance. The acrid smell of their bug spray wafted in waves until they became blind to it. They rested when they could, and for the most part Billy avoided the general chatter that fell upon the group. Small talk fell so far out of his comfort zone, but something else had wormed its way in, something he feared he might talk himself close to with a loose enough tongue. Well, more some _one_ than some _thing_.

Rebecca Chambers.

He’d thought about her less and less as the years had passed, until he didn’t think about her at all, but it was difficult to push someone like that completely from one’s mind. She’d sacrificed a lot for him, trusted in him when she had every reason not to. He’d been in custody for months when they had met, starved of any real kind of human contact, and the kindness she had shown him was unlike anything he had felt in so long. If it weren’t for her, maybe he’d have given up hope long before he’d reached the border.

He would like to see her again, he decided. Tell her how grateful he was for everything she had done, see if there was any way he could repay her.

But what were the odds that she’d even made it out of Raccoon City alive?

Maybe he would have the courage to ask Valentine or Redfield before they left. Would it be worth the risk? As far as he knew, Panama still had a solid extradition treaty with the USA and his curiosity wasn’t worth that much, not when it would pull her under the bus as much as it would him. Redfield was already suspicious, though he tried to hide it well. Had a lot of questions, asked about his time with the Marines as though he was finally affording him the trial the Navy never had. His answers had held up thus far, but Chris seemed like a tenacious guy. Pleasant enough, but Billy got the distinct impression that his bad side was one that should be avoided.

Valentine…she was different. There was a certain severity about her, but also warmth. She wrestled with her own demons, that much was clear, but she was honest and open and didn’t seem to care much about his past. If anything, she seemed more reluctant to talk about hers, so they had reached a sort of silent agreement and hadn’t veered that way since their initial conversation. Maybe when the time came, she would be the one he asked.

Billy was so deep in his thoughts, he hadn’t noticed Jill stop a few feet in front of him and almost walked into her. When he opened his mouth to apologise, she held up a hand.

“You hear that?” she asked.

Nothing.

“Shit.”

The others had already stopped up ahead, their weapons ready as they looked to Carlos for a signal.

“I ain’t your captain,” he told them, half-amused. “Anyone volunteering for point?”

* * *

Jill fell into line behind Chris and nobody protested. There wasn’t much in the way of an opportunity to surprise whatever awaited them, so she made sure her shotgun was loaded before they pressed on and the trees thinned out into a large clearing.

A ring of trees had been hacked down to their stumps, encircling what she supposed was a village – a sparse array of huts with thatched roofs and walls cobbled together from an assortment of woods and corrugated steel sheeting. A thick, nauseating scent hung in the air, sickly sweet but resting atop the fetid stench of damp and rotten meat. Near their entrance to the site, an eviscerated boar lay on its side, innards spilling into the dirt. Its belly appeared to have been torn apart by blunt force, and the spread of viscera loaned credence to this observation.

“Oh my God,” gasped one of the agents.

Jill’s attention turned to shapes dark against the mud in the opening between buildings. Human shapes, coated in blood and dirt.

“Base, you read?” Carlos spoke into his radio. Jill heard his voice buzz through her own earpiece but heard nothing but static in response.

“We should have signal,” Alvarez said. “We are not too far out, still in range.”

She tried to hail them, then Chris followed suit. Nothing. When Jill pressed a finger to her earpiece she heard only a whine – interference, distorting what had been a clear signal only twenty minutes ago.

“We still have signal,” she pointed out. “Something’s messing with it.”

“Spread out,” Chris urged the group. “Maybe whoever did this left something behind. But stay close, don’t wander off.”

They did as he said, Alvarez, Carlos and one of the others each disappearing into a hut as the others combed the grounds outside.

“You mind checking the bodies here?” Chris asked somberly. “I’ll, uh…I’ll see if I can find any more.”

Jill nodded, her throat dry. There were at least five bodies that she could see, and two were small enough that she really didn’t want to do what she knew she must.

So, she approached the one closest to her – a lady not much older than she. There was so much dirt caking the body that she wasn’t sure where to start looking for wounds. And that was a problem because there were none immediately visible. No lesions, no punctures, no chunks of flesh missing. The flesh was still luke-warm and soft – whatever had happened here had happened recently.

“Hey,” she called over her shoulder, to where Billy still stood. “Mind giving me a hand?”

She tugged on one arm, rolled the corpse over and it flopped against the dirt like it was merely sleeping. Was she-? No. There was no pulse.

Billy still hadn’t moved and she sighed to herself as she pushed against her knees and rose to her feet.

“Bil-“

In her line of work, she had become familiar with the thousand-yard stare. The look Billy wore could have been mistaken for that, but his eyes were fixed quite noticeably on a corpse a little ways from where he stood. A man, considerably older, hunched over on the ground, a single hand reaching towards the treeline.

“Hey,” she said, softer now, and placed a hand gently on his arm. Immediately, he snapped to attention, tore his eyes away from the body and looked her in the eye.

Panic. Fear. Two emotions she could never have pictured on him, shining back at her so clearly. Even when he looked away, he couldn’t hide it. Even with the press of a fist to his eyes and a tightening of his lips.

“If you need a moment, that’s ok,” she assured him.

The words were spoken with the hope of reassurance, but if anything it only seemed to complicate things. He laughed, and it was a hollow, eerie sound.

“Picture of fucking stability, right?” he said. He raised a hand and it trembled visibly, even as he curled his fingers into a fist.

“We’ve all seen our fair share of shit,” she assured him. “I don’t think a single one of us has come out without some sort of baggage. I get that. But I need you to focus just for now, ok? If that means you have to say some things right now that you want me to forget before we get back to base, that’s fine by me.”

He looked at her again, this time with more warmth. She watched as he extended his fingers again, and they held a little steadier than before.

“Thanks, doll, but looks like the moment’s over.”

Suddenly, it wasn’t Billy Hudson that stood before her. It was someone else with long dark hair and a tattoo upon their arm. Someone who spoke with a southern drawl, and a little less denial to his voice. Someone she missed terribly.

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, the words spilling out before she could stop them.

Her grief ebbed away as quickly as it had risen, but before either of them could say anything more, the others crowded back into the open, stepping over bodies and debris.

“No equipment,” said Carlos. “Nada. Few more bodies. Funny thing is, couldn’t find a single damn wound on any of them.”

Chris shook his head in agreement.

“Let’s take some photographs, gather what evidence we can find and get somewhere we can call this in.”

The air had changed again, but Jill blamed the sudden icy blast of nostalgia for the raised hairs on her neck. It preceded chaos by seconds but gave no hope of reaction, only a knell for what was to come. A knell that ended with a crack and an explosion of blood from Chris’s right. The agent at his side jerked back, hands flying to their throat, slick with blood that shot like a geyser from their mouth.

Someone yelled, someone else pressed a hand against her chest and pushed her backwards, and they all ducked moments before an onslaught of bullets tore through the air above their heads.

Jill pulled her pistol from her holster and fired in the direction of the first shot, straight into the cover of the trees. Something beyond fell, but before she had time to wonder what, pain erupted in the crook of her left arm and she cried out, a half-snarl torn from the very bottom of her throat.

Cold, pale fingers gripped her forearm, matted black hair cascading onto her lap. She turned her weapon, pressed it against the creature’s head and pulled the trigger, flinching as a spray of viscera erupted from the entry point. It fell away as quickly as it had appeared, and she saw thick rivulets of her own blood pour from an open wound in her arm.

The fear that struck was cold and numbing, but she pushed it aside. Not now. Later. Survive now, tend to wounds later.

Dirt erupted around her as bullets impacted against the ground, and for a moment her vision darkened as someone threw themselves in front of her, letting out a muffled cry as something hit them from behind and forced their weight down onto her.

“Carlos!” she cried.

“I’m okay! Hit my vest. Go, go, go.”

Together, they scrambled around an upturned wooden surface, ducking just in time to hear the muffled thud of bullets impacting against the other side.

“You okay?” Carlos asked.

“Got hit,” she said. “I’ll be fine, just hurts like a bitch.”

As though to prove her point, she peeked around the side of their cover in time to see another risen body lurch towards Alvarez. With one swift shot, she took it down.

There was a brief pause in the exchange of gunfire and in the momentary calm she made note of the position of the others. One of the SA agents was down, bled out near where they had been standing not two minutes ago. Alvarez was pressed into the side of one of the huts with the other two, and she caught sight of Chris just in time to see him plunge his knife into the skull of another risen corpse then roll off to the side.

Something flickered in her mind, in the web of suspicion spun by the years since that fateful July night. There were two more bodies rising, others displaced from their original position, caught in the crossfire.

In the silence, she heard footsteps and looked back into the clearing to see six, seven, _eight_ figures emerge from the trees. They were clad head to toe in black, their faces concealed from the nose down, each one bearing the same modified MP5.

It was a trap. How could they have been so fucking _stupid_?

* * *

Kim decided that this trek was even less enjoyable than the one she recalled from her younger days. Maybe it was the pounds of extra equipment she carried, or the unusually stifling heat even for this corner of the world. Whatever it was, she was about ten percent past done.

Recon had thus far been a bust. They had found a single camp, abandoned intentionally, stripped of as many supplies as was feasible to carry. It stood as a monument of the times, and she was hard pressed to find a downside to the rebels leaving their posts. In fact, she was finding it hard to see a downside to what was happening at all and that bothered her. Because bioterrorism was supplanting the regular kind and wasn’t it always better the devil you knew?

Her partner was a man of very few words, but even he had the odd grumble. He was drowning in DEET but continued to be savaged by bugs every step of the way. She would have teased him, but she didn’t think she knew him well enough yet to get away with it.

“People actually do this for fun?” he asked, picking the remains of a swollen mosquito from the palm of his hand.

“Apparently. I’m fine, by the way.”

“Lucky you.”

A smile appeared and cracked through his otherwise stoic demeanor.

“How long have we got?”

He checked his watch and frowned.

“They’re probably in the area now,” he said. “It’s fine, just keep your head down and-“

The crunch of woodland debris beneath heavy footsteps cut him short and he ducked down behind the nearest tree, urging her to follow suit with a rapid gesture of his hand.

The sounds grew louder, but no voices followed. The footfall was heavy and uniform – not the casual footfall of tourists out of place, nor the more careless tread of the criminals that had called this place home for many years. From their hiding place, they saw perhaps ten individuals, clad head to toe in black, clutching the same assault rifles, uniforms devoid of an insignia or any other identifying factor. It was clear that whoever they were, they had no wish to be identified – much like themselves.

If they noticed them crouching nearby, they did not let on. One by one they filed past in silence, and then vanished into the trees.

“Guess we found the BCA,” she said.

Her partner shook his head.

“That wasn’t the BCA.”

No shit. At least he was perceptive. But no mind. They had no business with them.

“I’d advise going in the other direction,” Kim said. Then, for good measure: “They look like the kind of trouble we want to avoid.”

Her partner looked at her out of the corner of his eye, watching her for a long, skin-crawling moment. She never liked the quiet ones, always felt they were hiding something, and this guy very distinctly gave her that impression, like she couldn’t let her guard slip even for a moment. Not for the first time since their arrival, she wished that they had just shipped her out with another FBC agent, someone she knew or at least who wouldn’t look at her like they were reading her life’s story through the lines on her face.

“We should follow them,” he said at last. “This is the closest thing to a lead we have. Let’s just-“

Gunfire cut through the stillness of the forest. Feet away from her, something darted through the brush but the trees, devoid as they had been of any signs of life, remained silent and unmoved. A clatter of gunfire answered its kin’s call, melded with it in a symphony of war.

“That’s a fight,” she pointed out. “Still sure you want to follow them?”

He wasn’t listening to her. His eyes were glassy, his gaze fixed on the dirt before him.

“The BCA,” he said.

Of course. They were in the area, the rebels had fled, and tourists tended not to carry assault rifles. There was no other conclusion to be reached. A distant cry joined the din and her partner’s head snapped towards it.

She knew that look.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned. “This is their problem, we can’t be seen.”

Expressionless, he stared ahead.

“They’re on our side. They don’t send out teams that big, they’ll be outnumbered.”

Panic seized her. All of this sneaking around, all of this planning, and he was going to fuck it all up over some God damn hero complex?

“If they make us, it’s game over,” she told him with rushed urgency. “You know what the implications are. You can kiss your job goodbye, forget any real chance of us making a difference. This could cause an international incident.”

He still wasn’t looking at her, probably wasn’t listening to her either.

“Some things are more important,” he said, and then he was gone, gun worked loose from his holster and an uncharacteristic stride in his step.

“Kennedy!” she growled. But he was already lost.

Fuck. He had no idea, _no idea_ what was at stake here. But what was she to do? So, she worked loose her own weapon and followed him.

* * *

One of the figures fired and Jill spun around to see the bullets kick up dirt around where Billy hid behind a high-cut tree stump. They were outnumbered now, especially with the creatures, and –

Another hail of gunfire, and Chris darted out from where he hid, firing towards the figures. One fell, its weapon sending a spray of bullets into the air, one catching one of the creatures that bore down on it.

Jill seized the opportunity, worked a grenade out from one of her pouches and flung it into the air.

“Eyes!”

One…two…three… She jumped in Billy’s direction, closing her eyes against the sudden explosion of light for a sharp second before opening them, grabbing onto his arm and hauling him towards one of the huts. The structure she had been hidden behind disintegrated against an onslaught of bullets and Carlos dove out of the way just in time, taking another creature down as he scrambled for cover.

They were close enough now that Alvarez was able to juke out from her hiding spot and fire point-blank at one of the figures, but another was close at hand to take her down, pinning her to the ground. Carlos, unable to find cover, had dove into the fray, slammed the butt of his rifle against the jaw of another. He barely dodged out of the way as one of the others fired in his direction, taking down their colleague instead. The body fell backwards, catching him off-guard as a third rammed into him with a hard shoulder and he tumbled to the ground, his rifle slipping from his grip.

“Carlos!” she cried.

She could make it to him if she ran. They were piling on too much pressure, not affording her team any chance to shoot out from their cover. Was that the point? Herd them back so the dead took care of it?

Billy had pushed forward, now was her chance!

Something grabbed her from behind, wrapped one arm around her neck, another around her waist, and lifted her effortlessly. She felt muscles flex, felt the warmth of that skin, felt how the arm at her throat squeezed tighter. Not a creature. A person.

“Jill!”

Billy had turned back to her, his eyes off Carlos. She wanted to scream back to him but was not afforded even the opportunity to breathe.

She knew better than to struggle, knew that was a sure fire way to lose what little air she had. So, she looked at the situation and her tools, wondered in the few short seconds she had how she could get herself out of this mess. Her assailant was taller than her, stronger. He’d lifted her up so that her toes just scraped the ground, was walking backwards away from the fight. Two hands, one in a fist behind her head, the other gripping her waist. No weapon.

Yeah, alright.

Jill lifted her right leg, enough that she was able to free the knife strapped to her calf and before he knew what she was doing, the blade was buried deep in his thigh. With furious cry, he dropped her and she hit the ground on all fours, pausing just a moment before spinning around and plunging the blade this time into the side of his neck.

No regret, only a fleeting moment of remorse. He had made his choice, left her with none.

Billy returned his attention to the fight when he saw that she was clear, but it was too late. Her gun lay a foot out of her reach and Carlos was on his back, hands in the air as one of the black figures rested a boot on his chest, rifle trained on his face.

No time to panic or grieve, that was what she had told herself. But that was exactly what she did. She screamed, tried to draw their attention away from him but that too was too late.

Chris wrestled with another agent on the ground, had the upper hand then did not. One of the other BCA agents fell in an explosion of crimson that tore through his collarbone. Alvarez was on the ground, covering her head, and as Jill watched the world play out in slow motion she saw blood splash backwards towards her from Billy’s direction.

A shot rang out. Just one. Not the clatter of an automatic but the sharp, precise crack of a pistol. The gun pointed at Carlos fell away, the figure tumbling to the side. The others turned, afforded Billy the opportunity to take one down and Jill another. One more figure emerged from the trees, then another but the first fired their weapon towards a creature bearing down on Alvarez and stopped it dead in its tracks.

Carlos jumped to his feet, armed again and in a stable position, and Jill turned her attention to Billy. Blood soaked through his sleeve, but he paid it no mind. More gunfire was exchanged, and one by one their assailants fell, until only one remained, clutching their thigh as they scooted along the ground towards cover.

“No, don’t-!”

With a final, punctuating crack, their body fell backwards into the dirt, lifeless and unmoving.

The silence after the fact was deafening, and the pain ebbed back in as adrenaline left. There were no zombies remaining, no assailants, but they were two agents down and now there were two other figures in their midst, albeit with their weapons lowered and guard down.

Carlos took no chances, and his rifle was trained on the closer of the two new faces – a young white man with dark blonde hair and hands held above his shoulders, his weapon dangling from one finger by the trigger guard.

“You speak English?” Carlos demanded.

“Better than anything else,” the man replied. He spoke with an accent that could be described no further than simply ‘American’ but also spoke with a calmness that was thoroughly unconcerned with the fact that he was surrounded by individuals waiting to capitalise on the slightest misstep.

“Good. Start talking. Who the hell are you?”

The other stranger – a woman, pale-skinned with dark red hair pulled back into a messy bun – stepped forward at this point, cast a wary glance to the others before glaring at Carlos.

“We’re the people who just saved your asses,” she growled. “So how about you lower your weapon and show a little gratitude?”

“How about keep quiet,” Jill advised. “And let your friend talk.”

The woman seemed affronted, looked from Jill back to Carlos, and then at her friend.

“It’s okay,” he told her. Then, he looked at Carlos. “She’s with the FBC, I’m with the US government – STRATCOM, if you want specifics.”

He still did not let his guard down, still stared Carlos down unflinchingly. Whoever this guy was, he knew that wouldn’t be enough for them to trust him. But why? Where was the usual arrogance that came with the flashing of such credentials?

“That supposed to impress me?” Carlos asked. “Because last I checked we weren’t in the US, and your government was told to stay out of this. Now, we just lost two men out here so you gotta give me more than that, or you’re gonna take it up with our CO and I promise you he ain’t nowhere near as friendly as I am.”

They all had a hand on their weapons now. Jill made a point of reloading her pistol – not a threat, or even a warning, just a reminder that they weren’t taking any chances.

“You expect Uncle Sam to take no for an answer?” the stranger said. “American citizens died here, they want to know what’s happening. So they sent us to poke around. Quietly.”

“Bang up job you’re doing,” laughed Billy.

“We heard gunfire and thought we could help. Probably a good thing we did. We are on the same side, but if it makes you feel better pointing that gun at me, you can keep doing that for a while longer. Or we can work together, look at what we’ve got here and figure out our next move.”

Loathe though she was to admit it, Jill knew that the help would work in their favour. The government’s interference was an annoyance, but it wasn’t unexpected at this point. They were as desperate as anyone to bury Umbrella for good. They were already three agents down and…

She grimaced as pain flared in the crook of her elbow, rattling down to her wrist and bringing a brief spasm to her fingers. She pressed her palm flat to the open wound and applied pressure until her skin was slick and the pain began to ebb away.

“You got a name?”

“Leon Kennedy. This is Kim Dennis.”

Kim shifted uncomfortably at his side. She was the nervous sort, Jill realised, perhaps taking their exposure a little too much to heart. Whatever her problem was, she did not want to be there and seemed to be affronted by her partner’s attempts to ingratiate them.

But she wasn’t the only one to react to his words. Beside her, Jill felt Chris move, turned to see his weapon lower and his brows raise.

“Kennedy?” he said. The name seemed to carry some sort of familiarity for him. “The name Claire Redfield mean anything to you?”

Kennedy seemed shocked to hear that name, and for the first time since his arrival, his mask slipped but a little. A weakness, perhaps? At least, a flicker of something a human passed across his youthful features.

“That would depend who’s asking.”

There was an edge to his voice that Chris recognised – he needed no more. He stepped forward, tapped the back of his hand to Carlos’s arm.

“Lower your weapon, I know this guy.”

Both Carlos and Kennedy seemed confused, but Carlos at least lowered his gun a little.

“He’s a Raccoon City Survivor,” Chris explained. “He escaped with my sister. When Umbrella kidnapped her back in ’98, this guy helped me find her. She’d be dead now if it wasn’t for him.”

“Chris?”

He scowled at the sound of his name. True, Leon was the reason Claire was alive, but he didn’t know the guy himself. At least, he knew they were on the same side and that was as good a place as any to start from.

“I don’t know why you’re here,” he said. “But Claire trusts you, and we both owe you for what you did. Don’t fuck this up.”

The others were a little less pleased at the sudden insistence of trust, but Jill at least gave him a reassuring nod.

“We all good?” Carlos said at last, his rifle now by his side. “No limbs need reattaching?”

“Got shot,” said Billy, lightly touching a wound on his left arm. “But I’ve had worse.”

“I’m okay,” confirmed Alvarez.

“Golden,” said the other agent.

“Same,” Chris said.

Jill hesitated, and all eyes turned to her.

“I’m fine,” she assured them all with a nervous laugh. “Got hit, just my arm though. Chris, help me patch it up? Hurts like a bitch.”

The sudden shock of her hesitation dissipated, and he swore gently at her as he led her towards a tree stump, leaving the others behind to scour the site. Carlos lingered a moment, his eyes on her, but joined the others soon after.

Her hand remained pressed against her arm, but Chris saw the streaks of blood beneath it and the way she held her arm. She’d been shot at before, been injured before, and she always shook it off, but it was always a struggle to not panic. A wonderful remnant from the summer of 1998.

She sat with her back to the team as he reached into his pouches and pulled out a roll of gauze, two dressing pads, and a small bottle of alcohol.

“Might need to borrow some of your stuff, this looks pretty bad.”

They did have a medic, but of course he was the first to have fallen. But in his time, Chris had learned a little about battlefield medicine. He knelt before her and reached for her arm, where her other hand still remained firmly pressed until he gently extended it towards him.

It wasn’t a gunshot wound. He should have known from the pattern of the streaks down her forearm. An ice-cold breeze passed through him as he took in the circular wound, and the imprint of teeth where her flesh was torn.

“I know,” she said, her voice heavy. “I fucked up.”

Necessity snapped his mind back to the clinical aspect of the task at hand, and he glanced quickly over to the others before pouring alcohol onto the wound and wiping the grime away with a clean pad.

“You don’t know that. The vaccine, they said it might-“

“ _Might_.”

She hissed as he poured a little more alcohol onto the bite and inspected its ragged edges. It didn’t look infected, didn’t smell infected, but he’d never seen a fresh bite this close before, so he didn’t really know what to expect.

“Chris, you have to promise me-“

“I already did,” he snapped. He didn’t mean to be angry, but a million other emotions raged inside of him and anger was the only one he knew how to manage. “But it’s not going to come to that.”

They sat in silence as he gave the wound one last pass before pressing the clean dressing pad to her skin and wrapping the gauze around her arm to hold it in place.

She was scared. She would never say as much, but he knew. And that meant that she knew just how scared he was too. He had already lost so much. He couldn’t lose her. Wouldn’t. Refused to. So this was just a thing that wasn’t happening.

When he was done, he helped her up but didn’t let her go. Instead, he put an arm around her shoulders, pulled her close to him and gripped her tightly.

“This isn’t over,” he said. “Not for you, not for us.”

“I hope you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a mammoth of a chapter, and believe it or not I actually sliced some things from it! I hope it wasn't too much, and if it was may I extend pre-emptive apologies because another of the upcoming ones may be just as long XD. I do try to cut them down where I can but sometimes it works best to just let them be what they are.
> 
> Thank you so much for your continued support, you are all honestly so sweet. I have gotten a little ahead with writing after a period of block I hope is behind me, so hopefully updates should be regular and on time at least for the next few chapters.
> 
> As always, let me know your thoughts and stay safe!


	7. Fever

**September 30 th, 1998. Raccoon City, Ohio.**

Jill knew she was infected. It was a feeling, not in her arm or in the hand that wrenched the barb from where it had buried itself almost to the bone, but in her gut. It had been almost an instantaneous thing, starting as a tingle across her skin, a flare of pain and then…nothing.

A few seconds was not time enough to take stock of one’s life, to wonder if choices made were the right ones, or if you had lived it the best way you could. So, as the cold washed over her and her muscles seized, she thought only how unfair it was that she had clawed her way through so much only to die here, alone, quietly.

But that wasn’t her last memory, not even in the hours that followed. They weren’t clear, or specific, not at first, but she recalled the warmth of skin to her cheek, the stale scent of days-old sweat and the pain that wracked her body as it was jostled with a gentle sort of urgency. She recalled the sounds of a dying city, gunfire, and then the deafening roar of silence.

The next time she woke it was in an empty room, surrounded by medical equipment. She panicked, tried to move, but could manage nothing more than a pitiful wail. She knew that room – she had been through it before in triage, more than once and not always for herself. Spencer Memorial Hospital. A private hospital nestled firmly in the pocket of her enemy.

There was no physical pain then, and that bothered her greatly. An ever-present acrid fetor lingered in her nostrils and forced her to retch a time or two, but nothing came out. She was infected. Dying. Already dead. She could feel her pistol in its holster against her thigh and could see her shotgun on a table opposite but could reach neither. And so, she allowed the darkness to come in waves, each emergence into the dim light a little less painful and significantly more terrifying than the last.

The fever dreams were the worst, coming and going with her consciousness. In them, she peeled the flesh from Chris’s face, ripped out Rebecca’s throat, feasted on Barry’s shoulder like she was tearing apart a Thanksgiving turkey.

Then, she felt the first flush of warmth since her collapse and was pulled almost back to consciousness.

“C’mon,” a soft voice urged somewhere above the void she floated in. “This shit better work.”

She woke again to a tingling in her extremities and a chill that was far less pronounced. A twitch of her fingers, roll of her head, and…she wasn’t alone. Someone hunched over a chair just out of arm’s reach – she knew because she made to reach out to them and very nearly succeeded. She knew them, somehow, but couldn’t place a face or a name. They wore tactical gear – a uniform she didn’t recognise, all khakis and blacks.

It wasn’t the last memory she had of them. Or maybe it was. They were all disjointed in recollection, scattered about like shards of consciousness in the chaotic expanse of time. In another, they pressed a cold, damp cloth to her face, pressed it down her neck, over her collarbone and down over her arms, apologising in an awkward way. In one more, they paced the room, peering out through the blinds, restless. In another still, they spoke into their radio and though she could make out words she couldn’t understand what they were.

There was one in particular that came back to her days after the fact, when she was curled up next to them in a hotel bed, musing over a completely different kind of predicament.

In this memory they were talking again, but to her this time. Their voice was gentle and soft, but also deep and resonating. It echoed through the sleep that both followed and preceded it, calling her back to consciousness, urging her on, granting strength where her own failed.

“Cleaned you up,” they said. “Uh, as respectfully as I could. You smelled pretty bad, no offense. Wouldn’t even know how to treat you for sepsis so thought…well, what else can I do? I’m no doctor.”

“You’re gonna have a nasty scar – tried my best but…uh…yeah, can’t even stitch up my damn socks.”

“Tell you what, I’ll take you on a date when we get out of here. Would you like that? Say nothing if you would.” Quiet laughter. “Thought so. I know that ‘fuck you’ was said with love.”

“-so you see, I ain’t all that good at making decisions for myself. Fucked up a lot. Now I’m working for the bad guys again. And you knew that. You knew that and you still helped us. Still trusted me. I ain’t ever met anyone like you, Jill. You’re a better person than I am. Than I know how to be. So, you can’t tell me this is fair. How it’s you laying there and not me. You gotta…you gotta come round.”

“I was joking about the date, by the way. Just in case this is your way of getting out of it. Just get yourself back here, Supercop, and I’ll get you home. I can promise you that much.”

* * *

**January 10 th, 2003. Darien National Park.**

Jill left no room for consideration of her injury and all that it implied. She was of no use to them in mourning, and that was no good. So, she helped move the bodies, even put a bullet through the skulls of a few, just in case. It was something she had done countless times before, but this time it hit differently, and her mind slipped to wonder which of the others would be the one to do the same to her.

Carlos pulled her aside after the heavy lifting, glancing at the bandage that already bore crimson stains through clinical whiteness.

“Still worrying about me,” she teased. “Isn’t this something we’ve been through before?”

He didn’t laugh with her, and she felt all at once sheepish. There was a time she had admonished him for being flippant where his own safety was concerned and now here she was, brushing him off in much the same way.

“It’s not the wound,” he said. “It’s _you_. I can still tell when something’s got you spooked. If something’s got you rattled, Jill, that worries me ‘cause I know the shit you’ve shrugged off.”

Lying to him had never felt right, and it felt even less so now. She thought of the damage she had already done, and how the moments they shared now may be the last they ever had, and she just couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye and pretend everything was okay. But at the same time, she couldn’t tell him what had happened. She wasn’t ready to admit to herself that it could be over, let alone him.

“We lost two men. Nearly lost you too, don’t think I didn’t see that. And what were you thinking-“

“Don’t even start with that,” he said. He was laughing, and she knew that he wasn’t even pretending to be mad. “That shot would have killed you – I just got a bad back out of it. Fair trade.”

“Thank you.”

Carlos blinked.

“You not gonna argue with me? That’s kind of our thing.”

“Not today.”

Carlos wasn’t sure what to make of that. He didn’t buy her excuse, not entirely, but he wasn’t about to push her into admitting something that made her feel uncomfortable. So, he returned to work, albeit with one eye still on her.

Now that the bodies of their assailants had been lined up away from those of their comrades, they began to search them and found little more than ammunition and basic medical supplies. Carlos rolled over the body that he inspected, patted down the legs from the front before feeling under the chest plate for anything that may have been hidden. Nothing.

“This one has no food,” he said, loud enough that the others could hear him. “Barely any water.”

“This one too,” said Jill.

“Make that three.”

“They must have been holed up nearby,” Billy pointed out. “Ain’t nobody stupid enough to trek this far into a jungle with no supplies.”

The shared intel didn’t entirely match up – Leon and Kim were under the impression that they were tracking arms dealers and Carlos thought it best to not elaborate on the more direct connection they had theorised. They decided to continue on together, talking through the ground they had covered separately and deciding on one last area that was worth a sweep, back in the direction Leon and Kim had seen the other agents marching from. They wouldn’t reach it before nightfall, but they could make it most of the way and camp out somewhere secure.

Carlos didn’t like the idea much. Chris seemed to trust Leon at least, but he’d only met Chris a few days ago and there was already enough of trusting someone just because someone else trusted them.

Leon knew, don’t ask him how, but there was no other way to explain the guy turning to _him_ with questions and suggestions, rather than Chris. Carlos insisted that he wasn’t their CO, wasn’t their Captain, but that didn’t seem to be worth much.

He didn’t like being in charge, didn’t like being the one to boss people around. He worked well under pressure, always had, but he took things too personally, had an awful knack of recklessness in an attempt to keep the body count as close to zero as was possible. Already, he felt guilt prickling in his chest when he recalled the faces of the agents they had lost that day. No, he wasn’t taking personal responsibility for the lives of these people. He didn’t have a great track record with that. Just look at Murphy and Tyrell. Jill was damn lucky to have made it out alongside him

Jill was flagging too, though she never was the type to admit it. The farther they pushed on, the weaker her steps became, and when they came to rest at an abandoned cabin she just about dozed off on Chris’s shoulder.

“I’m fine,” she insisted when he checked on her.

She wasn’t, was almost burning a fever, but at the mention of the word Billy had appeared out of nowhere, poured a sachet of electrolyte powder into her canteen and forced her to drink.

“Fever can be more deadly than half the shit you find out here,” he had said. “Been hit by it myself. If you need to go back, I don’t mind going with you. No harm in admitting defeat.”

Jill laughed at this.

“I’m good,” she insisted through an amused grin. “’Specially with big strapping men like you two to look after me.”

Chris checked on her too, but only when Carlos and Billy had given her some space. They talked in hushed whispers and that was when he had sat next to her and let her use his shoulder as a pillow for the little time they had.

It was always a struggle not to concern himself over her, and the detachment of the last few years had done nothing to change that. She had never liked it when he fussed too much over her, even if he did it as much to assuage his own fears as he did to comfort her. So, hard though it was, he fought it back, and cast it aside completely when she rose with renewed energy.

The shadows became longer as they pushed on and the temperature dipped. The sounds of the jungle echoed around them still, providing reassurance as they began to scout out camping spots for the night. They were all growing tired, Jill more so than the others. Her feet had begun to drag again, though she tried hard to hide it, and she hadn’t said a word since leaving the cabin.

When her legs gave way and she fell to the ground, Carlos felt something in his gut wrench, and he dashed forward without thought. It was Leon that caught her, but they both lowered her to the ground gently, the exposed skin of her arms cold and clammy where it touched against his.

“Hey,” said Chris, before Carlos could get a word in. He moved urgently, unable to hide the sudden panic from his voice.

Jill was able to keep herself upright with a little help, but she blinked slowly, breathed through her nose in long, controlled motions, urged along by the rise of her shoulders.

“Chris,” she said, in a voice that was dry and flat. “I can’t do this. I can’t… I can feel… _Can’t_ feel…”

Leon pressed the back of his hand to her forehead as the others crowded around.

“She’s burning up,” he said. “She can’t go on like this, you need to call in an extraction.”

“No!” she pleaded. “No, I can’t go back. You…go on ahead. I’ll be… Just go on without me.”

Carlos pressed down the anger that rose, channelled his energy into inspecting her, feeling her forehead the way Leon had and finding that it came away as damp as it did warm. In the dim light he saw the sweat staining her collar, could see the way fine hairs clung to pale skin at her hairline. Her lips were the shade of a healing bruise, the bags beneath her eyes pulling her several years out of her youth.

This wasn’t heatstroke.

“Jill, you’re unwell,” he said. “We’re not leaving you. Did you eat something? Anything bite you?”

She closed her eyes, breathed in, leaned her weight against Leon as she shifted her arm.

“Yeah,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Something bit me.”

Carlos followed her gaze to the gauze around her arm, brown around the edges but still glistening in the dimming light. With trembling fingers, he reached for it. The skin on her arm was as pale as the rest of her, but here purple veins and red capillaries cut through it, vanishing beneath the stained gauze. He had seen this before.

He unwrapped the wound like one would an unwanted gift, and when he peeled aside the saturated dressing and saw the teeth marks beneath, the trees sucked back into the earth and the light snuffed out of existence, leaving only him and her and a cacophony of muttering voices.

The wound _was_ healing, but it was healing slowly. No longer bleeding, but angry and puffed around the edges. The skin around it was hot to the touch, a red hue set around it.

When? He’d barely taken his eyes off her, hadn’t seen one of those things anywhere near her. How could something like this have happened? How could she have let it happen? How could he?

All at once, sound rushed back like a sonic boom. Leon was on his feet, holding back his snarling partner. Alvarez had stepped back towards the treeline and Chris was arguing with the other agent, still supporting Jill with a hand on her back.

“We don’t know that!” he snarled. “She’s been infected before, and she recovered. She was administered an experimental vaccine, has more antibodies than the rest of us combined. We don’t know this will kill her until it does so _back the fuck off_.”

The agent threw his hands in the air and walked to where Alvarez stood, a hand over her mouth.

“She could have killed us!” Kim screamed at Leon. “Look where your fucking hero complex has got us now. What if she’d taken a chunk out of you? Huh? Even President Graham’s _fucking_ Golden Boy couldn’t have wormed his way out of that one. We have to leave her here, do damage control and continue with _our_ mission before you fuck it up completely.”

“We have to put her down!” shouted the BCA agent. Alvarez hushed him, but Chris was already on his feet, Jill having at last found her centre and stabilised herself.

“Nobody is putting anybody down!” he roared.

In the midst of all this, Jill locked eyes with Carlos. There was a terror within them that unsettled him. He’d missed all of this the first time round, had done what he had to and not thought too much about it. Back then, he had been afforded that opportunity without having to witness the toll it was taking on her. Without having loved her.

“There’s a vaccine,” he said, disregarding the warring voices above them as he grasped for some kind of hope. “I know there is because I was the one who gave it to her. Didn’t…didn’t they get another sample out of Raccoon City? I swear I heard they did.”

“That’s right,” said Billy, chiming in for the first time. “Uh, Twilight or something. From the University, I read about that.”

“Daylight,” Leon corrected. “It’s called Daylight. They’ve been researching it the last few years, haven’t managed to reverse-engineer anything suitable for human use yet-“

“Given the options, she doesn’t have much to lose,” Carlos said.

Leon sighed, turning at last away from his partner.

“I agree, but by the time we get her to a sample, or vice versa, it will be too late. Even if we weren’t in the middle of the jungle. Jill, I…I’m sorry but-“

“I know what this means,” Jill snapped. “Don’t think I’ve not seen this enough? Not been through it before? It was a miracle I survived the first, I know I’m not lucky enough to hold false hope here. I’m only going to slow you down. So, either one of you takes care of this right now, or you leave me here and I take care of it myself.”

“Not a chance,” Chris said. “I’m not ready to give up on you yet.” He turned then to the others. “I’ll take her back to that cabin we rested up at, keep an eye on her. If it comes to it…”

“You get hit on the head at some point?” asked Kim, but Leon shushed her with an impatient hand.

“You sure?” he asked. Chris nodded.

“Jill is…” It was at this point that his voice cracked. “She’s family. I’m not leaving her here alone, however this ends. If we leave at dawn we'll be an hour behind you at most.”

Jill shifted uncomfortably, and Carlos felt her fingers find his arm and grip weakly.

“I’ll stay too,” he said.

“No,” Jill tried to protest.

“It’s past the point where you get a say in this. No offence.”

He wasn’t about to leave her alone, not at the end of all things. He couldn’t. And he’d be no use to them if he did, he felt that beyond the numbness that had begun to spread through his core.

“Me too,” Billy added.

“No-“

“All due respect, Carlos, she’s your ex and his-“ Billy jabbed his thumb towards Chris “-best friend. You might think you’ve got what it takes when it comes down to it, but will you really? We’re not coming back for her body and collecting two more. So I’m staying. Call it a fail-safe.”

Kim muttered something to herself before pacing away, laughing with her hands on her hips. She seemed more furious at the prospect of losing them than she was at their joining in the first place.

“Okay,” Leon agreed, eliciting another violent curse from her direction. “We’ll scout ahead in the morning, if we find nothing we’ll let you know and we can all get the hell out of here. If we do, we’ll hold out for your arrival.”

The idea of finding nothing felt absurd. How much blood had they spilled on this altar already? They couldn’t go home empty-handed.

With reassurance from more familiar colleagues and a reminder of caution, Alvarez and the other agent moved out with the Americans, a stiff sort of silence following them. At long last, they were left alone with the shifting sounds of the fauna ushering them into the night.

* * *

A call came in as the evening took hold and the stifling humidity mellowed to something a little more palatable. It was not the call he had been expecting, but as the small red LED bulb above the display lit up, indicating a channel that should have remained silent, he reached for the handset and pressed the stiff plastic button on the side.

“Is there a reason you are calling?” he asked, terse as ever.

There was a pause.

“Who the hell is this?” a voice demanded.

“The supervisor. Answer my question.”

Another pause.

“Well, _supervisor_ , your men are dead.”

The controller at his side glanced towards him, his breath held. The supervisor tapped the side of the handset, considered the situation, then let out a puff of air and pressed his thumb to the button again.

“And you know this how?”

“Killed one of them myself. Had no choice – my cover was at risk.”

His grip on the plastic device tightened – he could hear it strain against the pressure, cheap thing that it was.

“How many survivors?”

“Six.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed, careful that his anger did not transmit.

He cared little for the lives lost, concerned himself only with the fact that he had sent his best men to take care of that particular annoyance, and now he was almost a dozen men down with little to show for it. Sergei had warned him not to waste valuable resources and there was no other way to dress the situation.

Easy. That’s what this was supposed to be. An ambush, an extraction – nice and clean. They’d even scattered a few infected around to tip the odds ever more in their favour.

“I’m heading to what I assume is your position now, with three agents – we should be there maybe an hour after sunrise. I can try to stall but you better have a fucking spectacular plan. The deal was that you took care of the BCA. You didn’t deliver, and I need a damn good reason to not renege on my end.”

They sounded impatient, desperate – such people were often reckless, and that was a variable he did not like to entertain. Plans must be flawless, executed with minimal margin for error. One was already splintered, he couldn’t afford another setback.

“You said three agents – what about the other four?”

Laughter filtered through the line.

“That might take care of itself. One of them got bit. They’re holing up in a cabin overnight, don’t have exact co-ordinates but you should be able to find it, take ‘em by surprise.”

The supervisor rubbed his jaw, the scratch of calloused fingertips against stubble lubricating his thoughts. Perhaps all was not lost after all. Four people in a cabin – he could take care of that himself.

“Which agents?” he asked. “Who was bitten?”

“What does it fucking matter? The girl…Jill or something? One of the others is called Chris, I don’t know the other two, couple of meatheads.”

There it was. An opportunity. The proverbial clean needle in the filthy haystack. Just as he had reigned in his anger, he tried now to conceal his glee.

“We will take care of it. Stay on course.”

He killed the channel before a reply could come and turned to the soldier by the door.

“Get your men ready,” he said. “We head out at dawn.”

The soldier jostled uncomfortably.

“Sir, we can head out now. We have-“

“I did not order you to head out now, I ordered you to head out at dawn. I don’t pay you to make suggestions, I pay you to listen to me.”

For a moment, he considered explaining that this was Jill Valentine, former S.T.A.R.S., top of Umbrella’s most wanted list until they had too many enemies to keep track of. But that would have meant nothing to a grunt like him. He wouldn’t know exactly how much Umbrella had once offered for her head, and what she would mean for the future of the company now, alive, if certain theories proved true. How many knew what she had been through in Raccoon City? He did. He’d studied the footage, read the reports. Arklay, Raccoon, Rockfort, Antarctica, Sheena, even Spencer Rain; a wealth of information half the idiots on Umbrella money didn’t even know existed. But he did. Because he had ambition. Well, motivation, which looked the same under certain light.

His thoughts drifted then to the others. Chris. Redfield? It had to be. If he could deliver the two of them to Sergei, alive, perhaps the Colonel would forgive what he had lost. And the others? No doubt Oliveira was with her - he'd stuck to her like shit to a shoe. Oliveira didn’t matter, but delivering an ex-UBCS rat to the Colonel, even if it was just his head, could be a promotion in the making.

He smiled. Yes. Perhaps this wasn’t such a rotten turn of events after all.


	8. Dead of Night

**March 1 st, 1999. Charlotte, North Carolina.**

Jill had become accustomed to the vein-like stucco of the ceiling, having stared at it for four nights straight. Four nights, perhaps eight hours of sleep spread thinly across them. It was killing her, slowly, eating away at every sense until nothing useful remained in her. The documents she pored over every day had begun to make less and less sense, as though the blanks she was drawing were mocking her, goading her into trying harder and laughing as she failed.

What was any of it worth, anyway? They’d made no progress in weeks. Nothing new, not even the hint of a lead. Meanwhile, the paper-thin court case that played out on TV seemed more like a badly written play as each day dragged on. And the Federal Bioterror Commission? That new outfit the government had cobbled together to make it look like they were doing something? Laughable. Umbrella were winning and her best efforts were falling short.

She got bored of tracing the lines on the ceiling and slipped out of bed, the laminate flooring cool beneath her feet. In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face, scowled at her reflection, peed, stared at the bags beneath her eyes some more, and then tried to psyche herself up for another attempt at sleep.

One look at Carlos’s snoozing form was all that it took to throw her off, to abandon what felt like such a foolish endeavour and steel herself against the sudden wave of anxiety that burst upwards through her diaphragm.

She slipped into the kitchenette, found a dark corner between the cabinets and sunk down, head in her hands, moments before the tears came.

This was familiar to her now. Every night, the same hollow emptiness. Every morning, the same disconnect. It was like every time she reached out for something tangible, something to hold on to, it crumbled away beneath her touch. Sleep had been her only escape and now even that was being stolen away. Was this what drowning felt like? Trying so hard to breathe, but-

Something brushed her leg and she jumped, blinking hard against the tears. Carlos. She hadn’t even heard him wake, hadn’t registered his heavy footsteps. She tried to turn her face away and dry her cheeks, knowing that it was a futile effort, that he had already seen everything.

But he said nothing. Did nothing. Just settled beside her on the floor, his arm touching hers, head leaning back against the wooden cabinet, eyes closed.

Her defences lowered, slowly, but the tears did not pick up again. The tightness in her chest alleviated but a little, and when her hand reached for his, fingers entwining, and he gripped them back in turn, it began to dissipate.

Somewhere in her grief she curled into him and his arm found its way around her. They sat there in shared silence, waiting for the moment to pass.

“Pretty nice spot you’ve found here,” he said. “Quiet, dark…cookies within reach.”

She laughed despite herself, and he held her a little tighter. The warmth of him was grounding. While the world outside of their bubble felt thin and tenuous, in here at least it was solid.

“Still not sleeping, huh?”

She shook her head.

“We’ll head into town tomorrow. See what we can find.”

It wouldn’t do any good. Last time, she had needed the stronger stuff, the kind you could only get with a prescription. She hadn’t seen a doctor since she had left Raccoon City. Registering with a medical professional was a sure-fire way for Umbrella to pick up their trail.

She told him as much, and he kissed the top of her head.

“I’m sure I can find someone who can swing that for us. But…no-one would fault you for seeking help.”

“I can’t afford-“

“You’ve been through a lot, Supercop. We both have. Life-changing shit. And we’ve not had any help to get through any of it.”

“We’ve had each other.”

“We have, but we ain’t shrinks.”

“Would you take any of this advice?”

“No. But I don’t care what happens to me. I care about you. So if me going will make you go, I’ll swallow that pill. Literally, if I have to.”

Sometimes, she wished he wasn’t so damn nice. This whole damn thing would have been easier that way. Because all she wanted to do was be with him, doing normal things, trying to feel like a human being again. She didn’t have time for that, but he was so damn persuasive.

There was no strength in her to argue. So, she closed her eyes and lost herself to his warmth.

* * *

**January 20 th, 2003. Darien National Park, Panama.**

The last of the light was fleeing as they reached the cabin, led by torchlight towards uncertainty. When they arrived, Billy slipped inside, emerging a short while later with a nod and silent gesture of his hand.

There were two rooms within, each as large as the other, rectangular in shape and smelling vaguely of damp. Whatever this place had once been, it had been stripped to the bare bones when its former occupants had fled, leaving only a few crudely-made chairs and a single bed with a mattress so worn any comfort it provided was debatable at best.

It was here that they led Jill, half-carrying her despite her protests. Her strength was fading fast, and that was probably to their benefit as she put up less of a fight, chose only to huff at them before relenting to whatever it was they were trying to do.

Chris helped her out of her gear, propping her weapons and her vest against the wall at the head of the bed, before lifting her legs onto the mattress amidst a further round of protests.

“I’m not just going to lay down and die,” she fumed.

It was enough to wrench laughter from him, and she laughed back in return, letting him grip the back of her head and press his forehead to hers. It was clammy already, like the rest of her; just another sign of the life ebbing slowly away.

No. He wasn’t losing her, and he scolded himself for thinking as much. All they had to do was let her rest, let her body fight this and they would walk out of there together in the morning, laughing about the silliness of their worry.

“Let me take a look at your wound,” he urged. “I’d feel better if you let me clean it properly, stitch it up a little.”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot.”

She didn’t flinch as the needle pierced her flesh, nor as he cleaned away the blood that had dried in flakes around the wound’s edges. She simply watched him work with a familiar sort of detachment. Throughout it all she remained upright on the bed, her weight against the wall at its head, silent still.

“Claire wanted to meet up, by the way,” he said, unable to bear the quiet any longer. “She was asking about you over Christmas. Meant to mention that to you.”

A smile, exhausted and faint, spread across her face.

“How’s she doing?”

“Good. Restless. Apparently it’s a Redfield thing.”

Jill laughed, evidently agreeing.

“We should go visit,” she said. “After this mission. Take a week or two, make a vacation of it.”

How many suggestions of a vacation had she rebuffed? Was this what it took to get her to relax, to think of herself for once? Any other time, he would have argued, but he still wasn’t ready to acknowledge that it was easier to commit to something you know you’d never get the chance to see through.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked. He didn’t like this helplessness. Sitting around waiting for shit to happen wasn’t something he was ever going to be okay with, least of all something like this.

Jill glanced towards the door, and the footsteps that vanished in the room beyond.

“Where’s Carlos?”

“He’s checking the perimeter, same as Billy. They’re setting up some traps, just in case.”

“You didn’t all have to stay.”

“Yeah we did. I’m not leaving you, and from the way Carlos has been looking at you I think it’s safe to assume he feels the same.”

She let out a soft, sharp burst of laughter, devoid of any trace of humour.

“Thought I was making good progress there,” she said. “He’s actually talking to me again, you know? I mean real talk, not small talk. Thought maybe…maybe I could un-fuck this mess.”

He had wanted to ask about that, wanted to learn exactly what had gone on between them, but it never seemed appropriate. But he wanted to know, because when she was around him it was like she was a different person. The way she laughed at his jokes, the way she smiled when she thought no-one was looking. He’d seen her struggle for so long with so many things and suddenly it was like none of them mattered, like he was the gentle pressure that uncoiled the tension within her.

“You really care about him, huh?”

“He was my biggest regret. Even now, with…” She lifted her arm then let it fall back onto her knee. “The way I handled things between us is still the biggest fuck-up of my life. I thought I was doing us both a favour by leaving. Then I saw him again, and I realised I still… Nothing had changed. Not him, not me, not the way I feel about him. Fours year, Chris, and he still makes me feel like this. I said to myself ‘you can’t screw this up again’, and I didn’t but I still lose. He still loses. And that’s not fair.”

Chris cut off the last of the suture and dropped the needle and his knife onto the bed beside her then took her hand into his.

“None of this is fair,” he told her. “So that’s why you gotta fight this. He seems like a good guy. So you pull through, and you fix things. You take that shit back.”

Jill sighed, and closed her eyes, resting her head against the wall.

“I love you,” she said. “Don’t think I ever told you, but I do.”

“Hey! You knock that off. None of that last words shit.”

“I still got a few more in me. Just…want you to know. In case I don’t get another chance.”

Her eyes fluttered open, and she was still smiling at him.

“I love you, too, Valentine. So don’t you go leaving me here.”

* * *

Nobody was sleeping that night, but they tried. To Billy, the darkness offered familiar horrors, albeit with new faces. When he was roused gently and quietly by Chris, who was looking more haggard as the hours passed, he blinked up at the ceiling, feeling far less rested than seemed fair.

“Thought Carlos was up next?” he said, pawing the sleep from his eyes.

Chris raised a finger to his lips and pointed at the man in question, fast asleep on the other side of the room.

“He only lay down about twenty minutes ago. Was hoping you’d switch with him?”

Billy shook his head with a smile. Silly bastard.

“Yeah, no problem.”

Chris nodded grimly and Billy wondered what exactly had transpired in the hours he had been asleep.

“You doing okay?”

Chris grimaced and answered with silence.

“I’ll wake you up if something happens, yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Billy didn’t know what to expect. He hadn’t spoken to Jill much since their arrival, couldn’t quite bring himself to. What the hell did you say to someone in a situation like this? So, he had gone about his business, taking care of everything he could so that the others could tend to her and to their own grief without distraction.

Now, it was just him and her.

She was asleep when he joined her, so he found a spot a safe distance from the bed and began to dismantle his revolver, piece by piece, cleaning what he could and scowling at the rest. Every now and then she would let out a little groan of discomfort, change position, and then drift off again, if she was ever awake at all. It was comforting, to know that there was still enough of her in there to do something so mundanely human.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, trying to keep himself awake, when she gasped, sat upright, then promptly turned to the side and vomited a sickly mess of foamy mucus onto the wooden floor.

Billy didn’t miss a beat, had his gun trained on her, breath held.

She raised a hand, dry heaved once and then swiped at her lips with the back of the same trembling hand.

“Fuck,” Billy gasped. He shoved his gun back into its holster then ran to her. “C’mon, lay back down.”

“No,” she protested. “Help me…help me up, I can’t…fucking _cramps_.”

He helped her, but the moment her feet touched the floor her legs buckled and she face-planted his chest, remaining upright only by the grace of his reflexes and a firm grip on her elbows.

“Jill, you can’t walk.”

“Not trying to walk. Just help me…help me sit. By the wall. Not… _fuck_.”

“You’re delirious.”

“Don’t tell me what I am!”

“Sssssh. You’ll wake the others. Alright, put your arm around me, yeah like that. Now grab my shoulder.”

He had to grip one of her belt loops to help her move but together they made it to the wall and she slid down it with ease, then sighed as she rested her head against the solid surface.

“Thanks,” she said. “This…doesn’t help. But thanks.”

She laughed, so he took that as permission to follow. A fit of breathlessness followed, great hacking coughs that shook her entire body.

“Just don’t bite me, okay?” Billy joked as he lowered himself next to her. “Might take that personally.”

“Reflexes like yours? I’d be in trouble before I could open my mouth.”

She was stubborn, he would give her that. And he could see why Carlos liked her. He was drawn to fierce women like a moth to the proverbial flame. Billy had seen him suffer for it enough times, but he would always shake it off with barely more than a “C’est la vie”. But here was the one burn that had scarred, the one that had stuck with him over the years, and she had given Carlos enough hope these past few days that even Billy had found himself rooting for them. But here she was, rotting away, not a damn thing any of them could do to stop it. Maybe there was stock in Carlos’s claim that the only luck he had with women was none at all.

She grunted, drew her arm tighter around her waist, and then relaxed with a long, drawn-out sigh.

Damn stubborn.

“Sorry if I offended you back there, by the way,” he said when the silence called for words to fill it. “Wasn’t my intention.”

She blinked up at him, then sighed again.

“You didn’t,” she assured him. “I…spent the better part of two years in the army. Then another two with ex-Forces guys of all different colours. It’s gonna take a lot more than an offhand nickname to offend me, trust me.”

He took it, but it didn’t encourage a retraction of his apology.

“You reminded me of someone,” she said. “That’s all. Forest – one of…S.T.A.R.S. guys. You kind of- kind of look like him too.”

Another wave of coughs caught her short, but she soon steadied herself.

“He…called me ‘Doll’ too. Knew it wound me up and it did, but it was one of those things you don’t realise how much you liked until…until it was gone. When you… It wasn’t personal, it was just…”

“Personal.”

Billy wondered if Forest had been searching for him that night. Wondered what would have happened if he had found him on that train. He’d never asked Rebecca about the others, never had time. And now he saw just what she had walked into after the hell they had walked out of together, saw all that she had lost laid out in front of him. And suddenly, he felt guilty. It had been a miracle for him, a second chance. He’d thought himself lucky for so many years, but now…

“Can I ask you something?”

Jill hummed in what he assumed was agreement.

“In, uh…in S.T.A.R.S. – you know a girl called Rebecca?”

Jill’s head, which had been gently lolling against his shoulder, slowly returned to an upright position.

“Yes,” she said, the word heavy with caution and contemplation.

Billy considered his next words carefully, his throat dry, as though his very physiology was fighting the sentiments he longed to express.

“You know…how she’s doing?” he said, inwardly cringing at just how stupid that sounded. “I, uh…knew her. Before it happened. The mansion. I…left the city soon after, never knew if she made it out too.”

Jill observed him quietly and he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eye. He could feel her gaze taking in every line, every wrinkle, in analytical detail. Then, she gasped; a soft, short sound that almost induced another hacking fit.

“You’re Billy Coen,” she said.

The sound of his old name chilled him to the core, but he tried not to let it show. When he finally brought himself to look at her, she looked back at him not with anger or dismay, but with…wonder?

“Guessing she told you about me, then?”

“Yes! Well, only…last year? After the news. She tried to find you! Gave up because she figured you’d started a new life somewhere and were…happy?”

It was Billy’s turn to laugh now. There had been moments of happiness, but there was only so much one could achieve whilst looking over one shoulder. He told her as much and her brow furrowed.

“But you…wait…have you been following the trial?”

He shook his head.

“Nah. More bad news than good these days. Get enough of that in the day job.”

She wasn’t laughing with him.

“You don’t…” she whispered, and for a moment she looked more alive than she had in hours. She closed her eyes, shook her head gently and laughed to herself. “This trial has been shit-slinging from day one. Each side has dirt on the other and they’ve been…weaponizing that, fighting dirty. Last year, Umbrella leaked some documents that implicated the government in…in cover-ups across…across all branches of the military. War crimes, bad shit. One of cases leaked was yours. They tried to bring charges against the guy responsible but he d-deepthroated his Smith & Wesson before the ink on the warrant was dry.”

Billy could feel his hands trembling but kept them balled into fists. This wasn’t true. Couldn’t be true. All this time and…

And what? What did this change? Would he have went back if he had known? Would he have packed up his shit and returned to a ‘normal’ life? No. This _was_ normal. This was the difference he had joined the Navy hoping to achieve. He wasn’t here because he was running away, he was here because he had found something worth sticking around for.

“How…how did Umbrella have my file?”

Jill inhaled deeply, coughed, and looked at the floor as she spoke.

“Shared secrets, I guess? There…was one theory. One the evidence supports. That you w-weren’t being transported through Raccoon City, but to it. That Umbrella had bought your life, for whatever reason.”

Billy laughed again. That would not have surprised him, knowing what he knew now. He had been in great shape, had a clean medical history. They needed only to fake his execution papers and send him off to a much worse fate. Nobody would have asked any questions. Not his former comrades, not his friends. Not even his family, half of whom thought he was guilty, the other half not caring either way.

“I’m sorry.”

“You set me up?”

“No. But if I’d have found you in the forest that night, I don’t think I’d have been as kind as Rebecca was.”

“I think you would have. You were kind to him, despite what he was.”

“To who?”

“Carlos.”

She laughed.

“He didn’t tell you about our first meeting, did he?”

“Oh, he did. I think the insults and the cold shoulder actually turned him on.”

Another coughing fit, and she retched again at the end of it, brought up nothing. She was looking worse by the hour, and he felt ashamed after considering that perhaps had she not his tongue would not have been so loose. Dead men tell no tales and all.

“Why Billy?” she asked. “Could have chosen any name, seems kinda stupid to keep…”

He laughed. It was stupid, he knew. Even now he wondered how much of it was his own way of tempting fate, of leaving an avenue open for the inevitable – he couldn’t keep running forever, didn‘t _want_ to.

“Carlos,” he said. “The first night we got talking we really hit it off. First time in months I’d had a conversation that felt genuine. So, when he finally asked my name the truth came right out, like an old habit. Too late to catch myself. Gutierrez didn’t care, knows all about Coen. Guess it’s the one part of me I could hold on to. That and the tattoo. Was saving to get that lasered, you know. So thanks for ruining that plan.”

A smile worked its way through her features as she rested her head (and a little more of her weight) against his arm again, and he let her sit in silence, until the pitch of her breathing shifted and sleep claimed her again.

* * *

**March 26 th, 1999. Charlotte, North Carolina.**

Jill had known this moment was coming, long before she had made any sort of commitment. She had known it long before that email had appeared in her inbox, long before she had looked up bus routes and bought that one-way ticket for one. She had known it because she was happy. It seemed absurd to consider happiness a reason for doing something so drastic, but happiness was the one thing she didn’t trust any more. Happiness was complacency. It was routine. It was abandonment of one’s goals and she understood now just why their investigation had stalled and the darkness had begun to seep back in. It wasn’t, as Carlos had suggested, burn-out. It wasn’t PTSD or lingering trauma; it was neglect of her duties and allowing herself to fall in love in the middle of a damn war.

This was the easiest way. The _only_ way.

Of course, she had never intended to go so quietly but when it came down to it, saying ‘goodbye’ was even harder than saying ‘I love you’.

So, she decided to say neither, to slip out under the cover of darkness and hope he forgave her.

Four letters later, she wasn’t any closer to words that might have helped. She worried that she was blinded, still recalling the guilt-fuelled love they had made only hours ago and focusing too much on the things she didn’t want to do rather than those she needed to.

The last letter she wrote consisted of only two words. In the end it was all she felt that she could say. No contact information, no “I will find you when it’s over”. Two words that were like the blades of the scissors of the fates, severing this particular thread forever.

She cried quietly, bargained with herself, considered waking him and explaining it all the way she had planned. But she couldn’t’ do that. She would stay if he asked her, let him follow if he wanted to (and he would). She would have believed that there was a happy ending in this, and Umbrella would have continued on without impunity.

When she placed the note on the bedside table, she almost slid out of her jeans and joined him but caught herself and instead brushed a thick wave of dark hair out of his eyes.

And then…she was gone.

* * *

**January 21 st, 2003. Darien National Park, Panama.**

Carlos woke to a dark cabin, the only light a hazy yellowish sheet that emanated dimly from under the door to the next room.

The nightmare he had been pulled from ended so abruptly that his brain lagged, and the dark rotting wood of the cabin blinked in and out of focus, replaced for fleeting moments by the sterile walls of a hospital he had once held a similar vigil in.

He stretched his neck, rolled his shoulders, and looked towards the door. Somewhere beyond, the low murmur of voices rumbled. He didn’t know what time it was, found it hard to care. But he knew that sleep would not return to him, so he gathered his rifle from where he had laid it flat, loaded his pistol into the holster on his thigh and treaded carefully around Chris’s sleeping form.

Shadows obscured the corners of the second room, kept at bay by the yellow torchlight in the centre of the room. It fell upon Jill and Billy, sat together against the wall, laughing quietly at something one of them had said.

She looked terrible. That was the first thing he noticed. Though always light, her skin now seemed almost translucent, the blue and purple veins beneath like the lines of a map that led nowhere pleasant. Her entire chest heaved with the effort of every breath, and her eyes were half-lidded and dull.

“You’ve still got another hour,” Billy pointed out.

Carlos didn’t take his eyes off Jill.

“Can’t sleep,” he said. “You may as well take it – I got this.”

Billy looked to Jill, as though asking her permission.

“You could both get rest, you know?” she pointed out. “Block the door if you’re scared I might fancy a midnight snack.”

Carlos sighed, shook his head and gestured at Billy to rise.

“Told you she was stubborn, didn’t I?”

Billy retrieved his rifle and placed a hand on Carlos’s shoulder as he passed.

“You wake me up the second you need me, yeah?”

“Always need you, buddy.”

Billy’s wry smile preceded his departure and as the door closed behind him, Carlos suddenly found that he was out of words.

And Jill noticed. Of course she did.

“You could comment on how I look,” she suggested. “Or…you could…admonish me for being out of…bed. Call me stubborn. Claim I’m fa-faking it for…attention.”

As he settled beside her, he bumped his shoulder against hers, a little gentler than he would have had the circumstances not been so dire.

“You always did have a problem with others looking after you. Last time we did this you were spark out. Little less of a nightmare.”

She laughed, and it spiralled into a fit of dry coughs that made him immediately regret his joke.

“I…don’t know how much longer I can stay awake,” she admitted.

“You don’t have to,” he told her, though no part of him agreed with that. She had to stay awake, stay conscious. Because as long as she did, she was here, alive, breathing.

“I do…now you’re here.”

Carlos dug deep, tried to find the anger he had been carrying around since her reappearance. In the corners he had left it he found nothing, only the imprint it had left, in a shape so ridiculous he couldn't stand to look at it.

Anger was for people who had time. Strip that away, strip away everything but them, and all he could feel was a horrible sense of pain, like an animal with its leg caught in a trap, already half-gnawed.

“There’s some things I want to say, before…before I go to sleep,” she said.

“Might wanna leave them for when you wake up.”

A smile answered, humouring him.

“Maybe. But they’re important. And I…might forget. And you need to hear them.”

“Jill…”

He felt her weight ease off his arm, and she raised a hand to rub the back of her neck, huddled for a moment with her legs drawn to her chest before extending them out again.

“Carlos, please-”

“It’s going to be okay. You’re just scared and-“

“I’m not.”

He looked at her, really looked at her, and saw no hint of a lie, nor a mask meant to resemble bravery. He didn’t understand it. It wasn’t stubbornness or defiance.

“And don’t…don’t claim to know how I feel. You’ve never known.” There was venom in her voice, but it was measured, administered in a dose he would admit was earned. “I’m not the same person I was when I left. She…she would have been afraid. Was afraid. I’ve been…been afraid for so long. Running. From something, to something, it didn’t matter. Even n-now, I… Maybe I do die tonight, maybe this really is how it ends. But fuck it, all the ways I could have gone, and I get to go amongst friends. How many of us are that lucky?”

Carlos felt all at once ashamed. He remembered the woman he had met that night in Raccoon City; a pretty face in the chaos, then a soldier, more competent than any he knew. Someone he could believe in. He’d put her on so much of a pedestal that when the cracks began to show he hadn’t seen them for what they were, hadn’t seen her for what she was – a human, as broken as any other, just trying to survive. And now she was tired, and what? He was angry at her for not grieving the way that he was?

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise either,” she warned. “Just listen.”

“You first.” If she didn’t, if he didn’t get this out, maybe he never would. Maybe she would say some things that would hit just right, and he would decide that she was better off never knowing. But he still paused, still gave her time to interject, and she didn’t.

Because she decided, in that moment, that for once she _should_ just listen to him. Because she never had, not really. She had talked and talked – Umbrella this and Umbrella that. And when Chris had called and a new path had opened, she had made his decision for him, decided what was best when she had no right to. This…it was the least she could do for him, in the end.

“I wanted you back for so long,” Carlos said. “But looking back, I wouldn’t change a damn thing. Not us, not what we had…not how it ended.”

Jill swallowed hard, her throat like sandpaper. Honesty wasn’t always kind. Listening wasn’t always easy – you didn’t always hear the things you wanted to.

“I relied on you a lot,” he continued. “Didn’t realise until you were gone. When I joined Umbrella I was…I was a different person too. You wouldn’t have liked me. I was…lost. Long before they found me, actually. Just some kid who wanted to make a difference, following every lead that looked promising, wherever it took me. Every…every time my mother looked at me, I saw how…how heartbroken she was. You put all that effort into raising a kid, and that’s how they end up? Even with you, what had we really hoped to achieve? On the run, living day to day. When you left, I was on my own for the first time in years and I had to figure out what I was doing, where I wanted to go. And it brought me here. I got an apartment, an honest job. I reconnected with family, I’m repairing the bridges I burned. When my mom looks at me now it’s different, you know? And I think if you’d stayed things might have been different. We’d have burned out eventually – I know that for sure. So I’m glad you left. Because I got my shit together and you…you came back. And you say you’re different and I agree, but that’s…that’s a good thing, Jill. A real good thing. And…I’m glad we got this chance to reconnect.”

His honesty was stark, brutal. And she found that she agreed. The road they were heading down led to only one destination. Had she spent the next six months with anyone but Chris, she’d have lost them too. Maybe this wasn’t ideal, but it was the best they could have asked for, given the circumstances.

So bold was his honesty that she felt emboldened herself, and asked a question she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know the answer to:

“You think…given time we could have…we _could_ …get back what we lost?”

A few long seconds passed as he considered this, gave it the full duty of care that it deserved.

“Yeah,” he said. “At least…I was hopeful. _Am_ hopeful.”

That was it. The one thing she needed to hear. Nothing else mattered, did it? That mistake, the one she’d dwelled on for so long, could be undone. Given time.

“You said…you were pretty sure you loved me,” she said, the boldness now settled into her bones, taken root. “Well, I’m certain I…I loved you.”

She felt him tense, felt his focused gaze bore into her even though she did not see him turn.

“Sounds dumb, but that’s why I left,” she admitted. And it felt good, to say those words aloud, whatever good they would do now. “I thought we were the reason the investigation had stalled, thought we were getting…too…too…comfortable. Chris was just…an excuse. I t-told you, I was…fucked up. I didn’t realise at the time but…I needed help. And I did the worst possible thing I could and I’m…so sorry.”

The numbness that had taken her had started to ease, and she felt a fresh wave of pain cut through her, sharp enough that she had to bite into her lip to not cry out loud. There was little energy left in her, but how could she lay down now that he was here? If these were her last moments, she didn’t want to spend them sleeping, she wanted to make the most of them, wanted her last memory to be of him, not of some fever dream.

He pressed a palm to her cheek, turned her face towards him. She didn’t want to think of the state she must have been in, but to his credit there was no pity in his eyes. And when his hand slid down to her shoulder and he pressed his lips to hers, there was no hesitance, no revulsion. All at once, every nerve still functioning within her fired, and everything hurt but that was okay. She barely had the energy to kiss him back but she did, and he tasted just as sweet as she remembered, kissed her just as fiercely.

When they parted, no words were exchanged, just a silence that spoke and acknowledged everything. Then, the conversation flowed again, for how long neither was certain. They spoke of little things, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. But his arm was around her and his warmth more than replaced her lack of, and when the weight of her eyelids became too much to hold up, it was with a certain sense of peace that she lay down, with his assistance.

“Will you stay?” she asked, as he peeled the last few strands of damp hair from her forehead.

“I will,” he promised. “And I’ll be here when you wake up.”

He pressed his lips to her forehead, and they burned the skin that they touched.

“And you’ll take care of it?”

“I’ll take care of _you_. Always.”

“Even when I don’t need you to?”

“Especially then.”

She felt comfort and darkness beckon.

“Take care of Chris,” she asked. “He’s tough, but…”

“I will, but it won’t come to that.”

Maybe, she thought. Maybe it wouldn’t. She didn’t know. For now…she needed sleep. So, with her hand still in his, she made a deal with the darkness and let it swallow her whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with this chapter - as some of you may have seen in comments from last chapter I kinda fucked up my wrist somehow so writing has been limited to short sessions recently. Fortunately I had most of this chapter written before it happened, however I don't have much of next done yet so I can't promise that will be uploaded on schedule. I will have another chapter up before the end of the year, hopefully before Christmas, I just ask kindly that you bear with me :).
> 
> Thank you as always for your support!


	9. The Watcher

**January 21 st, 2003. Darien National Park, Panama.**

Carlos stole snippets of sleep in the final hours before dawn – a few minutes here and there, nothing substantial. Once, he even drifted deep enough to dream and woke to a darkened room and the stench of his own sweat. He was cautious, always was, but he wondered as he peeled back sleep-encrusted lids one more time if he had allowed himself to slip away because he was truly indifferent to what that may mean for him.

Billy had once referred to his life as a reception room, sitting with a paper slip in hand, waiting for his number to be called. Carlos was adamant that he hadn’t claimed a slip of his own just yet, but that night he did, pulled it from the dispenser without a glance at what was written upon it. If it was called, it was called, what did it matter?

He should look into that, he realised, sliding his hand over the plastic grip of his rifle. Was he unafraid of death or simply ambivalent at this point?

Jill still slept when he woke, the light that streamed through wooden beams harsher to his eyes than he expected. Had they slept in? There were no sounds from the adjoining room, and nothing to be heard outside. He checked his radio – still on. No messages had woken him, no call for help waiting.

Then, he heard something. A death rattle, slow and steady. Air pulled into a parched throat, rattling its way to an empty chest. He raised his rifle, both hands trembling. The form on the bed moved, a single arm folding, palm pressed flat against the mattress. A groan followed, and his finger remained on the trigger. Greasy hair fell over her face. He couldn’t see, couldn’t shoot. Not when he couldn’t see her face, not when he couldn’t be sure.

_‘Get a fucking grip, she’s gone and you know it.’_

Slowly, he rose to his feet, watched as Jill pushed herself upright, doubled over, shoulders bent back.

_‘What are you waiting for? Gone soft ‘cause she said she loved you? Think that’ll stop her ripping your throat out and tearing through the others for dessert?’_

“Jill?”

He raised the rifle, centred her head in the sight. A hand shot out, palm facing him.

“I’m not d-dead yet, asshole,” she gasped. He could have dropped the rifle, would have had every joint not suddenly locked in place. “W-water. Need…water.”

The rifle was gone, and her canteen was in his hand, then between her own. Now, one of his hands was pushing hair back over her head, the other against an arm that felt _warm_ as she chugged the canteen dry.

He muttered something then, in Spanish, though even he could not be quite sure what it was. A prayer, perhaps – something he had once heard his mother or maybe his grandmother utter. Suddenly, a slew of alien thoughts rushed through his mind. Should he have listened to them? Gone to church more often? This had to be some divine act, something he had once written off as a fairy tale for those with false hope. Not only was Jill alive, but she was _warm_ , she was moving, and…

He pressed the back of a hand to her forehead. No fever.

“How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” she admitted, her voice a little less raspy with the lubrication of warm water. “But like…like I did in RC. After…when I woke up. Maybe a little worse.”

“You slept for almost a whole day then,” Carlos pointed out. “Thinkin’ maybe you need that now.”

She fired him a look that chased the last of his fears away. No way she could look at him like that if she was in trouble. Like she would punch him if only she had the strength.

He called for the others and footsteps followed, but he took the few moments they had alone to breathe, to rest his forehead against hers and tell her, sincerely, that she had done it, that she had pulled through like he said she would. They both knew that the belief had never truly been solid, but she said nothing, let him have his moment.

There would be another conversation, best left for another time. He had wondered between bouts of sleep just what he would say if – _when_ – she pulled through. If he had kissed her because he truly didn’t think that she would. But now, watching her reassure Chris despite the weight she carried, he realised that no, that wasn’t it. He had been open and honest, with her and with himself, because he knew that the strength would have left _him_ come morning. That despite everything, there was a sliver of selfishness in him wanting her to pull through. What he was to do with that knowledge, he did not know, but he felt the ill-fated prophecy ring true as adrenaline or whatever the fuck else had kept him going on minimal sleep drained away and the room span around him.

He excused himself, but Chris seemed not to hear his words. Jill’s touch lingered on his hand, but she let it slip away with a weak nod. Billy, Carlos realised, was absent, and he found his friend outside, leaning against the cabin wall with a half-spent cigarette between his lips.

“You make a good couple, you know that?” Billy said, offering the cigarette. Carlos considered it, then took it with a faint, confused hum.

“You both look like shit,” Billy clarified. “Don’t think you’ll be joining the others. Either of you.”

Carlos took a drag from the cigarette and coughed as the fumes, coarse and acrid, burned their way down his throat.

“The fuck?” he spluttered. “Isn’t this supposed to make you feel better?”

Billy laughed, took another drag himself then held it out again.

“Who the fuck ever said that? You feel that burn? Sucks, right? But it’s better than what it’s covering up.”

Carlos considered this as well, felt the warmth that lingered, the lights that had flickered back to life in the wake of that fire. He took the cigarette.

“You’ve got issues,” he coughed in the wake of another long drag. Billy chuckled again.

“Don’t feel it anymore,” he said. “More habit than anything else now. How’s she doing?”

“Ask her yourself.”

Billy stubbed the last of the cigarette out against his knee pad, pressed it into the dirt with the heel of his boot. Carlos considered asking for another, but the last thing he needed was another vice. The little he had indulged in had worked its magic - it left just enough calm in its wake for the tremors in his hands to stop.

“She knows about Coen.”

“I owe you an ‘I told you so?’”

“Big one. Turns out…ah, fuck it, I’ll explain later, maybe over a whiskey.”

Carlos side-eyed him, and he felt the last vestiges of panic slip away with the promise of something a little more normal at the end of all this.

“Sure,” he said. “But I’m buyin’.”

* * *

Leon was an early riser. Always had been. At the Academy it hadn’t really been a choice, but through his days there and the training that came after his recruitment into STRATCOM he had found that the fine line between his personal and professional lives had slowly blurred from yellow police tape to barely a stain on a well-worn pavement.

When he woke that morning, he was the last to rise, greeted by the sight of a silent standoff between Kim and the BCA agents. Neither side advanced nor retreated, merely teetered on an edge he may have acknowledged but still didn’t fully understand.

There was a lot he didn’t understand, and he was usually able to let it slide, acknowledging that his constant need to grasp every nuance of every situation wasn’t always appropriate, but something kept nagging this time.

“You sleep like a log, anyone ever tell you that?” Kim asked, her shoulders sinking in relief when she saw him awake and alert. “C’mon, we all slept in.”

“Any word on Jill?”

She shook her head, looked off into the trees.

“Not a peep,” she said. “Hope she was worth it.”

They made time only to check their equipment before pushing on into the jungle, a quick call to the others remaining unanswered. There was a part of him that wanted to turn back, the same part that prickled, like metaphorical hairs on end.

“They will be ok,” said the female BCA agent – Alvarez, was it? “Will take more than one zombie to stop them.”

“People get stupid when emotion comes into play.”

“You speaking from experience?”

Of course he was, but that wasn’t really any of her business.

“We should not have left them,” Alvarez said. Then, she nodded to her colleague, trailing in the rear. “He thinks we should have taken care of her and stayed together.”

Leon glanced over his shoulder, saw the distance both the other agent and Kim kept from one another.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think she is dead. But I also think, emotions or not, Carlos and Billy would not have left anyone behind. It is not…how do you say it, ‘in their nature’?”

“Is it in yours?”

She shook her head.

“No. But the mission is more important, and I don’t trust you. Or her.”

“So you’re here to keep us in check, huh?”

“No. I’m here to get the job done. I think you are too. Her…I am not so sure.”

There was no reaction for her to analyse – he did not afford her that much. He knew the BCA as well as an outsider could, probably would have joined them himself had Simmons not strong-armed him into government service. But trust was something earned in his book, and he wasn’t quite there, not yet.

There was another issue at hand, however, and that was just how much he trusted Kim. He had only met her the day of their flight, and she was talkative, sure, but selectively so. From her record, he knew that she had served with the Air Force, had lost family in Raccoon City, and was an almost exemplary agent within the ranks of the FBC, coming with personal recommendation from Lansdale himself. From Leon’s experience, he saw an angry, rash person, perhaps someone still grieving, still raging against the machine. While anger didn’t necessarily make someone untrustworthy in his book, it made them reckless and reckless people were prone to mistakes.

He dwelled on this some more as they carved a path through dense, undisturbed brush, hope of stumbling upon evidence fading with every fresh step. Then, they happened upon a clearing, one man-made, the timber of the hut in the centre fresh, the charred remains of a campfire suggesting recent activity.

Leon made to signal the others, but they were already armed and alert, and Kim held out an arm to hold him back.

“Think it’s empty?” she asked.

Leon squinted, saw two empty metal structures next to the hut, the soil around them disturbed. There were plastic crates, open and seemingly empty, as though abandoned in some great hurry. But there were no signs of violence, nothing to suggest the occupants had been chased away. And his heart sank. There was no denying what this place was, and evidently its former inhabitants had cleaned up shop when their assault team was wiped out. The chances of finding something substantial, something useful, suddenly hovered around the ‘zero’ mark.

“Yeah,” he said, not even trying to mask his disappointment. “Let’s split up, see what we can find. Be careful where you’re stepping – assume the place is rigged.”

It wasn’t, as luck would have it. There were no mines hidden carefully (or otherwise) beneath dirt, no trip wires or even good old-fashioned nets and sharp sticks. The BCA agents busied themselves sorting through the crates outside, one of them kicking a broken generator as he stumbled across it. Kim insisted on checking the perimeter, seeing if she could locate tracks or any other signs of life, while Leon entered the cabin and the muted sounds of the jungle ebbed into nothingness behind him.

The structure appeared larger on the inside than its exterior would suggest, but was still composed of only three rooms, one large rectangular one bearing doors to two more. He paused for a moment, took in the barren space that surrounded him, and shook his head. There were marks on the floor where equipment had once stood, cigarette butts ground into the dirt floor. Perhaps they could collect them, see if any DNA lingered on the charred paper? No, futile. They had nothing they could match it to and if they did then so what? Without any further evidence, it meant nothing.

He chose the door on the right, seeing beyond evidence of furniture remaining. Cables punched through the exterior wall, running to a single light bulb above his head and through the wall that led to this second room, but not the third. Slick palms sliding against the grip of his firearm, he crept slowly forward, allowing himself to breathe only when the room proved to be as vacant as the last. Here though, a desk sat against one wall – a plank of wood nailed into the wall on either side and propped up with thick slabs that still bore bark. Upon it sat two monitors and radio equipment Leon wagered was older than his father. Whatever the monitors had once been connected to was long gone, and the cop part of his brain considered dusting the radio for prints before he remembered the futility of such an endeavour. So consumed was he with little details, with things that perhaps four years ago he would have entertained, he at first did not notice the August snowflake upon the desk; a small tape recorder with a slip of paper taped to the front.

 _‘Play me,’_ it read in rough, barely legible writing. Of course, Leon wasn’t one to blindly follow instructions from strangers, especially not one speaking so theoretically, so sure their note would be found. So, he flipped the device over in his hand, looked for wires, anything out of the ordinary. There was a cassette within and he ejected it, turned that over, discerning only that it was the right shape and size to fit into the old radio.

Satisfied that he wasn’t about to trigger some elaborate trap, he pressed his thumb to the play button, held the device at a wary distance as voices poured out.

“Is there a reason you are calling?” asked a male voice, coated in a thick but intelligible accent Leon knew to be Russian. It sparked familiarity, but not potent enough for a name or a face to reach him. Vladimir, perhaps? No, Vladimir wasn’t one to bow to this level of operation. Someone under his command? It was merely an accent, but it was something.

“Who the hell is this?” Another voice – female, American, pent up with so much rage he could almost feel the spit flying through the receiver. He…knew that voice.

“Your men are dead. Killed one of them myself. Had no choice – my cover was at risk.”

_“No!” Leon screamed. But his plea came too late. The man’s head snapped back, a spray of blood and viscera erupting where his nose had once been. From the other end of the pistol, Kim glared at him from beneath angled brows, her lips pressed tightly together._

“I’m heading to what I assume is your position now, with three agents – we should be there maybe an hour after sunrise. I can try to stall but you better have a fucking spectacular plan. The deal was that you took care of the BCA. You didn’t deliver, and I need a damn good reason to not renege on my end.”

“You said three agents – what about the other four?”

“That might take care of itself. One of them got bit. They’re holing up in a cabin overnight, don’t have exact co-ordinates but you should be able to find it, take ‘em by surprise.”

“Which agents? Who was bitten?”

“What does it fucking matter? The girl…Jill or something? One of the others is called Chris, I don’t know the other two, couple of meatheads.”

“We will take care of it. Stay on course.”

The device whirred into silence, the depressed button popping up to punctuate the end of the dialogue.

Trust his gut, that’s what Benson always told him. He was young and naïve but he always knew when something didn’t feel right. Had with RC, even with Ada despite it all. His problem, his boss liked to remind him, was that he tended to give people the benefit of the doubt, rationalise away what he detected. And he had done it again.

“I’d say I’m disappointed,” said Kim, her voice clear behind him, not a tape-buffered echo. “But I never did trust the slimy asshole.”

Leon turned. Her weapon was not raised, but she held it, ready and waiting.

“So what happens now?” she asked.

If he had expected that familiar rage to confront him, he was disappointed. She sounded tired, almost afraid.

“You tell me,” he said. “Looks like you’re the dealer here.”

She laughed, stepped further into the room.

“Your new friends are likely dead,” she told him. “Tweedle Dum and Tweedle fucking Dee outside don’t know a damn thing. You hand me that tape and maybe we walk away from this and no-one else gets hurt.”

“I hand this over, you put a bullet through my skull. Don’t think I don’t see your finger twitching.”

“Might do that either way, haven’t decided yet.”

If she had wanted to, she would have done it when his back was turned. But that didn’t make his options any easier to whittle down.

“What was the plan?” he asked. Anything to buy a little time, wait for an opportunity. “What was your end of the deal?”

“The fuck does that matter?” she laughed. “You think this is like the movies, where I’m going to spill everything then by some miraculous twist of fate you leave here alive and in time to stop me? You think _I’m_ the villain here?”

“You’ve still got a conscience. That’s why I’m still alive. I’m just having trouble piecing together why you want the BCA dead, that’s all. They’re survivors, just like us. Umbrella murdered your parents, Kim-“

“Don’t fucking talk about them!” she snarled. Her right arm was raised now, though not enough that her weapon was trained on him yet. “You have no idea what it’s like to lose someone like that. You had your playtime in the city, you got out alive and walked straight into a wonderful job. You have any idea how long it took for me to find someone who would actually _listen_ to someone like me? We can’t all whisper in the president’s ear, Kennedy.”

There was a shadow in the doorway, footsteps masked by her cries. It was a moment, was an opportunity, but not for Leon. No sooner had Alvarez appeared, Kim’s arm was around her, the barrel of her gun pressed beneath her chin. Alvarez, to her credit, fought, but Kim’s position was too advantageous, and she could do nothing but squirm in her grasp.

“How about a new deal?” Kim challenged. “You give me that tape and I don’t put a hole in Senorita Hope’s pretty face?”

“Suéltame, _puta_!” Alvarez cried, tugging again at Kim’s arm.

“Not gonna happen,” Leon said. “Only way we’re all getting out of this in one piece and is if we all stay calm. You said nobody listened to you, well I’m here…listening. There’s three of us and only one of you – you drop her, I drop you, then what have we got? Two more dead people, that’s all.”

Kim didn’t answer right away, breathed deeply through her nose, finger on the trigger, staring him down.

“How many more have to die?” she demanded. “Sylvia Bennell was an American citizen; it should have been us picking up this case. What have the BCA got? Nothing. If it weren’t for them, you know this would have been handed to the FBC, and we’d have closed the damn book by now. The UN has us fucking neutered because of some do-gooders with blood money behind them. Don’t tell me you don’t see it too.”

Fear, anger, hatred. Wanting to handle things yourself, not trusting anyone else. He knew that place. Had been there himself a time or two.

“Yeah, I feel that leash,” he said. “It’s around my neck too. I know what it’s like to feel helpless, but if you’re deciding who lives and who dies-“

“For the greater _good_.”

“Good? No, this isn’t good. You trade in lives, you’re no better than they are.”

Alvarez cried out as Kim’s grip tightened.

“Wasn’t going to hold up my end. Soon as the BCA was gone, I was gonna report back, hand them over.”

“They knew that. That’s why they left the tape. Turns out you’re not very good at lying, Kim.”

“Fooled you, didn’t I?”

She didn’t hear the next set of footsteps, but she heard the cry at the door. Perhaps she had forgotten about the other agent, perhaps she was unsettled enough that her focus lapsed for a single, critical moment. But Leon saw her finger slip off the trigger as her head turned, and Alvarez saw him raise his weapon. A palm to the wrist below the pistol pushed it clear of her jaw, and the elbow of her other arm found its way back into Kim’s side. She twisted their forms, dove towards Leon, spun around just in time to see the gun raise again, the finger slide back over the trigger guard.

Leon thought, as he always did before such things. But all that urgency offered him was consideration of whether or not he would pull the trigger, not what would happen if he did. He was sure that Alvarez would survive, that if he hesitated the shot fired would be one that would tear through her soft tissue and end her life, no second chances.

So, he fired, and Kim’s pistol fell to the ground as her body hit the wall, a flash of red erupting between them. Alvarez hit the ground and Leon rushed forward to catch his partner, saw the shock in her eyes as her hands flew up in a futile attempt to stem the flow of blood from her chest. He pressed his over them, her blood warm and bright as it ran over his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quietly. He wasn’t sure if he had meant to aim for her chest, or if she had moved – _had she moved?_ In a panicked part of his mind he sought an answer that absolved him, a reason that felt a little less like murder. _No vests_. They’d sent them in without God damn bulletproof vests.

Kim’s mouth opened, sounds formed in her throat but her voice couldn’t follow through. Flecks of red had begun to appear on blue lips as she gasped for air. He couldn’t recall what he had shouted at the others, only that the blood never stopped flowing. Then, the hand that clawed at his arm fell and he felt her tense against him one final time before her body went limp in his arms.

All was quiet in the wake of it all, as he held her on his lap and closed her eyes gently with trembling hands. It had to come to this, he assured himself. There was no better way this could have ended.

A hand on his shoulder snapped him from momentary grief.

“Thank you,” Alvarez said. “You…did the right thing.”

“I need your radio,” he said, lowering Kim’s body to the floor and wiping his hands on his shirt. He needed to focus, needed to make this worth it.

“We can call this in,” Alvarez assured him. “You don’t need to do-“

“Just give me the radio.”

* * *

The sunlight was bright. That was the first thing Jill noticed as she limped outside, wondering if peeing would strip her of what little energy remained. It was something her brain worried about while her bladder screamed and her stomach sloshed, demanding something that it could imminently expel.

The adrenaline that had powered her through the final night in Raccoon City was gone. Limbs felt heavy, head felt like cotton candy. But she was alive, and without the time to fully consider what that meant.

She found a wide tree to squat behind and kicked around the dirt when she was done. Then, she took a moment to breathe, to listen to the sounds of the jungle and to her own thoughts, still fragmented like pieces of a dream.

The bite. The pain. The kiss. Perhaps this whole thing _was_ a dream, and she would wake up back in her small Chicago apartment, reminiscing once again about things she had lost and others she had thrown away.

When the thoughts ebbed away, she realised that she stood amidst silence, a faint rustle in the distance somewhere above all that hinted at life. The hairs on the back of her neck raised immediately, and she reached for the holster at her thigh, brushed her thumb against the cold metal of her sidearm.

She tensed when a crackle of static sounded within her earpiece, began to make tentative steps back to the cabin before the voice spoke.

“Chris? Do you read?”

Leon. He sounded…agitated. Urgent.

“Loud and clear, over.”

“You still at the cabin?”

“Yeah, slept in – Jill’s-“

“Get out of there, now. Someone’s heading to your position.”

“Affirmative.”

No questions, no reasoning. The trust between them astounded her – Chris was a cautious man these days.

It was a caution she knew well, but the silence of the jungle and her own frayed nerves sent her stumbling back in the direction of the cabin, just in time to see Chris emerge.

“Inside!” she screamed.

“Jill, we gotta-“

“Now!”

She threw her weight against him, barely capable of applying enough force to move his bulk, but he stumbled back enough that she could cross the threshold and slam the door behind her.

“Didn’t you hear the message?” he demanded, though not without a note of wariness in his voice. “Jill, we have to-“

Something impacted against the roof, large and heavy. It skittered for a moment, before the same sound played out again and powdery debris rained down on them.

“The fuck was that?” hissed Billy.

“Hunter?” Carlos guessed.

“Hunter would have smashed straight through.”

_The click of bone against tile, the chitinous skittering of the abominations bearing down upon her. ‘Almost there’, she urged herself as her thighs burned, propelling her forward towards the exit. She heard the door hiss shut in the distance, unhooked the last grenade from her belt. Something else hissed behind her; a rattling death knell, ringing for her._

Jill looked to Chris and his eyes met hers in sudden, horrified acknowledgement.

“Chimera,” he said. “Human and fly DNA.”

Billy laughed nervously.

“Fly DNA doesn’t sound so bad.”

“You never seen that movie?” Carlos asked, incredulously. Then, he looked to Chris. “Any weaknesses?”

“They’re fragile but fast,” Jill chimed in. “Couple shotgun blasts will do the trick, otherwise aim for the limbs. Take them apart if you can’t take them down.”

“Think we could outrun it?”

Jill shook her head.

“Tried once,” she said. “Nearly lost an arm.”

“What’s the plan then?”

“We try to outrun them.”

She saw a smile crack, and one found its way to her own lips. Just like the old days, huh? Trading in hope and luck.

They checked their weapons, spread what ammunition remained around the group. Jill tried to hide her movements from the others, tried to soldier through the stiffness in her joints and the weakness in her muscle. But when she dropped the second clip, Billy grabbed her hand, held it up, and observed the tremors in her fingers.

“You’re in no state to run,” he pointed out.

“We don’t have a choice,” she argued. “Unless you want to leave me here?”

He dropped her hand, looked to Carlos, then to Chris, and then back to her.

“Not leaving you, but if they’re as fast as you say, you’re not even gonna make it to the treeline.”

She pushed one final shell into the chamber of her shotgun with a little more flair than it required.

“That’s why I’ve got this.”

The others, she noticed, were observing her now, and though she would not have said as much out loud she knew what they were thinking. She could still be infected, was at the very least weakened and exhausted. She could see the bags beneath Carlos’s eyes too, saw his somewhat laboured movements. And if the chimera didn’t kill them, there were likely enemy soldiers waiting to mop up that mess, perhaps merely expecting the bioweapons to make their job easier.

“We run,” Chris said. “I’ll take point. Jill, you stick to me. You two take the rear. Whatever happens, our priority is getting Jill out of here.”

Jill bristled.

“Chris-“

“We need to protect you,” Chris insisted. “If you _have_ fought off the infection, you could be the key to a viable vaccine. That’s worth more than all our lives.”

“And what if I haven’t? What if one of you trades your life for mine and I turn anyway?”

“This job’s full of risks,” Carlos said. “I’d say this one’s worth it.”

She saw their point, even if personal feeling factored in a little too heavily for her liking. Above them, movement had ceased. Chimera had great eyesight, but their hearing left a lot to be desired. If they were quick enough, this just might work.

“Leon?” she called, pressing a finger into her earpiece. “You still there?”

A few seconds of silence, and then…

“Good to hear your voice. Had us worried for a while there.”

“Got at least two bioweapons on us, any idea how many men?”

“Shit. Small camp, can’t be more than half a dozen. We’re heading back to your position.”

Movement above; something hissed.

“Copy, our best shot is in your direction. We may be coming in hot.”

“Copy. Just stay alive.”

Not a word was spoken as they edged towards the door and Chris opened it slowly, tentatively. It made no sound, and there was no further movement above. A sharp click sounded as Billy pulled a grenade from his belt and thumbed away the pin.

Chris steadied himself, turned to the others.

“One…two… _three_ …”

They poured out into the clearing, not looking back. As the treeline approached, shrieks sounded behind them and an explosion tore through the artificial silence.

“Got one,” Billy cried. “Go, go, go!”

The trees swallowed them, branches whipping the Jill’s arms as she ran. Every tap felt like blades drawn across exposed skin, but she bit into her cheek and pushed on. Gunfire erupted behind them, a familiar rattling hiss sounding beyond.

“Shit, it’s still alive!”

“Jill?”

Chris turned, saw just how far behind she had fallen. She tried to power herself forward but it felt like wading through treacle, like a marathon in a dream. The pain settled into numbness, flared through her nerves until it reached her lungs, where it burned even hotter.

“Chris!”

He didn’t see the creature, fell in a blurred tangle of gangly, rust-coloured limbs. A single blast from a shotgun rang out, then another a second later. She couldn’t see him through the trees, found only a crush of vines and welts of dirt where he had fallen.

“Chris?”

The gunfire behind her was answered now and voices she didn’t recognise cried out. Carlos and Billy were nowhere to be seen, and an errant shot impacted against a thick trunk to her left.

“Jill?” she heard Chris’s voice call, though she could not discern the direction. The edges of her vision began to darken, her legs refusing to move now that she had stopped.

“C’mon,” she urged them, reached up to steady herself only to have bark tear at her skin.

A human cry followed a clatter of gunfire somewhere behind her, and then she managed to push herself off again, albeit with one leg dragging a little.

She couldn’t see the others, couldn’t discern which voices belonged to them and which to their assailants. Something rustled in the trees above her, drew her attention up-

The thing that fell was missing a forelimb, the carapace burned into swathes of what smelled like melted plastic as the weight of the thing forced her to the ground. She screamed as a spindly appendage pressed into her injured arm and something tore through her fatigues below the knee and then the skin underneath.

The shotgun she had held lay just out of reach, but she freed the pistol on her thigh and fired into the chimera’s mass. Though she emptied the clip, the thing continued to scream at her, a jawless mouth lined with human teeth bearing down upon her. With some effort, she managed to pull one leg up, pressed her boot into its chest and pushed her weight back against it.

The creature was forced to use its one remaining forelimb to brace itself against the ground, but another limb whipped around, and something sharp plunged through the strap of Jill’s vest and into her shoulder, drawing another cry, one that was answered with her name somewhere in the distance. Another slammed into her side, barely halted by the thick fabric of her vest.

Then, two shots rang out, one tearing the remaining forelimb from its body at the joint, the other sending one side of its skull back into what little brain was housed within. Jill heaved, pressing against the dead weight, but she was trapped, breathless, and exhausted.

Her saviour moved it with little effort at all, light as the things were. The gunfire had quietened, now slivers of rifle fire rather than an endless stream of noise. Good, she thought. She had no energy left in her to run, no-

A heavy boot pressed into her stomach, hard enough that she might have vomited had anything remained within her. When she looked up, it was into the barrel of a gun, just for a moment, and then into a face split by a smirk she would have known anywhere.

Jill laughed. There was nothing else she could do. Laugh, and wait for her body to catch up with her mind and wake the hell up. Because that’s what this was, wasn’t it? A fever dream, the kind that had seen her sit there helplessly on the floor of Spencer Memorial’s triage room as Carlos turned before her. She was still in the cabin, still infected, still dying.

“Might have expected a little more than that,” Nicholai said, seemingly caught somewhere between annoyance and confusion. He looked the same as the last time she had seen him, watching their helicopter leave, a deep and primal fear etched into the lines of his face. But when he pressed his boot further into her stomach, when she felt the pain spread beneath the rubbery sole, she realised that this was not a dream, that she was really here, _he_ was really here, and suddenly nothing made sense.

“Left you for dead,” she said, realising that after Wesker such a thing really shouldn’t have surprised her.

“It’s a good thing I don’t hold grudges,” he said. “How long has it been? Four years? Five? Nice to see how little you have learned.”

She considered the knife on her calf, wondered if she would be able to reach it before he could fire.

“Right back at’cha,” she growled. “Grandstanding again when you should have just pulled the trigger.”

“He can’t,” said Chris. Jill glanced to her right, saw her partner take tentative steps towards them, his gun trained on Nicholai, an expression of rage set upon his dirt-streaked face. “Gun’s empty.”

“You sound very sure,” said Nicholai, but Jill detected a slight waver in his voice.

“Looks like you’re running a Mark 7? Heard you fire eight times – three for sure at me, and two at that thing. No discarded mag, so either you slapped the empty one back in or you worked some sleight of hand magic.”

Nicholai looked almost impressed. He smirked, folded back the arm that held his weapon.

“You must be Redfield,” he said. “You sound like a cop.”

“And you sound like a dead man, so throw that over here and take two steps back ‘fore I forget about taking you in alive.”

Nicholai sighed, looked from Jill to Chris, and then back again, before his lips twisted to match the perpetual frown upon his brow. Jill felt the pressure on her abdomen release and pushed herself back the moment her movement was freed. She checked her shoulder, felt warm blood flowing over her collar bone but couldn’t inspect the damage fully without removing her vest.

Steadying her weight on shaky legs, she turned her attention back to the man before her, eyed him with equal parts suspicion and contempt. She could see the cogs in his mind working, saw him analysing everything from her gait to Chris’s grip on his weapon. Chris didn’t know him, didn’t know how dangerous he was.

She slapped a new magazine into her pistol, pulled back the slide and then aimed it at Nicholai, knowing full well that he could see how it was taking all of her strength just to hold the damn thing up. She could fire a shot, sure, but it would floor both of them. If he knew that, he _would_ capitalise on it.

“Umbrella buy you out?” she asked. “Or did your other gig fall through?”

He smiled at her, a big toothy grin that made her stomach lurch.

“You know me,” he said. “I go where the money is. Put in a bid, maybe I’ll talk.”

“You know this asshole?” asked Chris.

Before she spoke, she pondered just how much she should reveal, worried that he may feel the same she did, that perhaps his finger would be a little less controlled and whatever information lay inside Nicholai’s head would soak into the dirt with whatever else rattled around in there.

“Left him for dead on a rooftop in RC. You remember that, do you? Remember how little I cared about what leverage you had. So you better give me a good reason to not do now what I should have done back then.”

He wasn’t shaken, not even slightly. And that unnerved her. In the distance, one last burst of gunfire called an unknown skirmish to a close.

“Sounds like your boys were shit out of luck,” Chris pointed out. “And you with them. Should probably listen to the lady.”

Nicholai did not react, and in his lack of emotion Jill found the last piece of the puzzle, the part that made the looseness of his tongue irrelevant if just for a while.

“He knew,” she said, quietly, cautiously. “He knew we’d fight them off. They weren’t here for us, there were here…to distract you. While he came for me. Still hung up on that, huh? Still think you can make a quick buck out of me?”

Nicholai sucked on his teeth, let out a huff of through flared nostrils.

“You’re old news,” he told her. “More trouble than you’re worth. This place gives me all the combat data I need. Your blood, though…” His eyes fell to the dirty bandage on her left arm. “Surely even you can see the value in that. Isn’t this what you wanted all along? A vaccine. Umbrella can make that happen.”

She didn’t entertain the thought, not even for a second. And he knew that too. He was stalling, but for what she couldn’t determine. Time? His men were dead, the bioweapons too.

“Jill, Chris?” Carlos’s voice called through her earpiece. “You copy?”

Jill pressed a finger to her earpiece.

“Loud and clear. Got something you might want to take a look at.”

She raised her gun into the air, fired two shots. Something moved nearby, pushed its way through the trees.

“Always with a knight in shining armour,” Nicholai taunted, his eyes flitting sideway to Chris again. “One day, you will not be so lucky.”

“Chris!”

Jill didn’t move at the sound of the new voice, but Chris did - barely an inch, but it was enough. And that’s what their prisoner had been waiting for, the opportunity he had calculated. She fired as he moved, but the bullet missed by a clear margin. Nicholai moved so fast she did not see him disarm Chris, only saw the gun flung behind them. By the time she steadied herself and lined up another shot, Chris was on the ground and a single sweep of Nicholai’s leg took her own out from under her. Before either of them could make it to their feet, he was gone, leaving both his own gun and Chris’s behind as he disappeared into the jungle.

“Go!” she screamed at her partner, batting aside the hand he offered her.

“He’s gone,” he hissed. “Think I’m stupid enough to leave you alone after hearing that? Could have someone waiting to pounce, could double back.”

The retort caught in her throat – he was right. Probably was what he intended.

Three familiar figures emerged from the jungle behind her, the tallest reaching down to help heave her to her feet.

“Everyone okay?” asked Leon, maintaining a tight grip on her elbow. With a low grunt, she pushed him away, glared up at her partner, expletives rolling onto her tongue, ready to tear him a new one no matter how clearly she saw his point.

She had not been afforded the opportunity to look at him properly yet, to take him in. The front of his vest was coated with a thick, inky ichor. A gash on his forearm bled slowly, and she could vaguely make out another clean cut along his hairline.

The fight left her, along with the last of her energy as the blurred figures of Carlos and Billy approached. Leon had begun to talk about something they had found, and something else about backup and medics, but she wasn’t sure if she couldn’t hear him or simply was too tired to listen.

“I think,” said Chris, offering an arm for her to lean on, “we should call it a day.”

She agreed, used Chris’s good arm to help lower herself onto the ground. There was too much to process, to many things to pull apart an analyse, and every time she tried pain flared from somewhere new.

Carlos crouched beside her, offered him some water out of his canteen. Then, as O’Brian’s calm voice flowed out of her earpiece in response to a question she had not heard asked, she leaned against him, closed her eyes, and thought of nothing but the bed waiting for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello. Sorry about the long wait. I always overestimate how much time I will have over the holiday season and found little time to write even after my injury healed. I will be honest and admit that I have also been struggling a lot with block recently, and churning out this chapter at times felt more like a chore than a hobby. I feel like a lot of it was due to how I'm feeling personally at the moment (also just this chapter in general lol) but I think how dead the ship/fandom has been hasn't helped - less people interacting but also less content being put out which has led to a tempering of my hype, if not my love :(.  
> I do intend to finish this story and I still plan to keep updating it regularly, but now that I've caught up with myself in terms of writing (I've always been a chapter or two ahead) I'm not sure I can keep hitting the weekly update schedule. From here on I will post chapters as they are done - this might mean that some come in a week or even less, but some may be a little longer. I do not intend to leave such a big gap again but I just don't want to promise weekly updates anymore when that may not be realistic. On the plus side, I've been excited about writing the next chapter pretty much since the story began so hopefully the next update will be a quickish one :). I may post updates over on Tumblr if something is taking a long time so you can always follow me over there if you want :).  
> Thank you to those that are still around, and those that stick around - you guys really are awesome :).


	10. Old Flames

**January 26 th, 2003. Panama City, Panama**

Leon had no reason to still be in Panama, but something had kept him back, something not entirely within his control. Reports had been submitted, interrogations had taken place, Kim’s body was back on American soil, yet there had been no orders to pull him home. Maybe, just maybe, the counteractive pull of the bars and the beaches was too much for him to consider querying that or taking the initiative.

Several days had passed since their return to civilisation and outside of a relatively amicable lunch with Chris the only contact he’d had with any of the BCA was what he could only describe as a sizing-up by their behemoth of an Ops Manager and his more reserved American counterpart. The meeting had not gone quite as well as he would have liked, but significantly better than it should have.

For a more patient man, the paid leave in this particular corner of the world would have been welcomed. But Leon always had struggled to switch into a lower gear, always needed somewhere to be, something to do, some problem to solve. The way it had been since Raccoon City, the way he had sworn it would always be, so long as Umbrella remained standing. As long as that unknown hung over his head, he couldn’t enjoy the bars, couldn’t appreciate the beaches.

Perhaps that was the reason he now sat in the corner of a tourist trap of a coffee shop, refreshing his emails, hoping for something, anything to come through.

Just then, a bold line appeared at the top of his inbox.

 ** _Kennedy, L. S._** , the email read. _This is an automated message to alert you of the deactivation of your VPN key. This action was requested by **Benford, A.** at **14:28 UTC** on **01.26.2003**._

Leon blinked. He refreshed his inbox, saw a little yellow triangle appear in the bottom right corner of the screen. Refresh. Refresh. With a click, he opened the smaller messenger window to find that his status was set to offline, and a yellow banner had now appeared indicating that his laptop was no longer connected to a network. He removed the dongle plugged into the side, shoved it roughly back into place. Nothing.

He tried his phone next, hitting speed-dial ‘1’ and pressing the device to his ear.

“This is Benford,” a warm voice answered.

“Am I being dismissed?” Leon asked curtly. There was a pause.

“Good morning, Leon. Ah – I suppose it is afternoon where you are. Let me guess…I hear tableware, I hear chatter…you’re in a café, probably sitting in a corner, on your…third coffee?”

Leon frowned at the half-empty jug next to the window.

“I was just checking my emails.”

“Leon, I have your log in front of me right now. You have been connected to the network for thirty of the last forty-eight hours. After I very specifically told you to take leave for a few days.”

Leon sighed. He hadn’t realised it had been quite so bad, but he still failed to see what the issue was.

“Sir-“

“Someone died by your hand – a _colleague_. If I were playing this by the book, you would be on administrative leave right now, spending most of your spare time in a therapist’s office. The BCA are hard at work planning their next move and I am currently in discussions with Ramón Gutiérrez and Clive O’Brian, exploring your potential future involvement in this case. Until then, you need to take it easy. You need to recover and let the BCA handle things for now.”

“Sir, you know I can’t do that. Getting stuck in is the best thing for me right now.”

“I know you believe that, but I have known you long enough to know better. As your employer, I am ordering you to take the leave you have been given. As your friend, I am asking you to rest, enjoy the sights, take a well-earned break.”

Benford was right, and that infuriated Leon. Because now he was out of ideas, out of excuses, and that meant only one thing: the kind of sleepless nights he didn’t like, and the closing in of the crushing darkness that had been pursuing him ever since Raccoon City.

“Your key will be reactivated in forty-eight hours,” Benford said when there was no argument. “Until then, please put your feet up, Leon. I will be in touch when we have something new to go on.”

“Thanks, Adam.”

With a final sigh, he closed his laptop and reached for the pot of coffee, fully aware that whatever remained in it was likely cold. He didn’t care, needed the boost.

His cup was barely full when someone slid into the booth opposite him, as casually as though they had agreed to meet, resting delicately manicured hands on the table between them.

He looked up, their eyes met, and a breath of air that may have passed as laughter escaped him. Perhaps this moment warranted more of a reaction, but he was too tired, too drawn-out, too acclimatised to the bizarre at this point that the only thought that crossed his mind was ‘of course’.

“The dead don’t usually look as pretty as you do,” he said. “Suppose you’re the third this week though, so why the hell not. Welcome back.”

Ada smiled, and he felt something warm somewhere inside of him. It certainly wasn’t the coffee.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“No shit.”

“It’s good to see you again, Leon.”

Residual anger bubbled beneath an inexplicable wave of relief and longing. But, as always, it was the heart that won; that horrible, traitorous thing that had landed him in more trouble that he cared to remember. The reason she had been able to fool him in the first place.

“You too,” he admitted, for the sake of honesty. “But what do you want?”

“I hear you’re working for the government now. The Anti-Umbrella Pursuit and Investigation Team. Quite a mouthful.”

“Once again, you have me at a disadvantage. Think I just figured a few things out for myself though.”

“That I work for Umbrella? Would you be surprised to learn that you’re wrong?”

“Nothing you say or do could surprise me. Hell, nothing at all could surprise me at this point. You want some coffee?”

She reached into her purse – a slender black thing against her side – and pulled out a thick A5 envelope which she then slid across the table to him.

Without comment, he opened it, pulled out a wad of photographs and a bundle of papers with curiosity that verged on intrigue. The photographs showed a man of vague familiarity – pale skin, white hair, standing tall amongst gaggles of black-clad soldiers. Some were taken in a location he surmised as the Gap, others in a setting he recognised clearly as Raccoon City. In these older photographs he recognised some of the other faces. In one, Oliveira stood by as they and others listened intently to a red-capped man, presumably their captain. In another, he and Valentine held weapons trained on one another, the latter streaked in dirt, blood and who knew what else. The final photographs showed him alongside a man Leon _did_ recognise – Sergei Vladimir.

“What is this?”

“The man you’re looking for,” Ada said. She cast a quick glance around the café. “Nicholai Ginovaef. Former Spetsnaz, former UBCS, currently working directly under Sergei Vladimir. He’s in Colombia overseeing the collection of combat data, for what ends I don’t quite know, but what you haven’t figured out yet you’re probably not far off.”

“Where did you get these photographs?” he asked.

“Umbrella surveillance. Streamed directly to their central data bank – they gathered hundreds of hours of data throughout the fall of Raccoon City. The rest – well, you could say it’s a hobby.”

None of this made sense, less even as he uncovered a detailed profile of Ginovaef, and documentation linked to his involvement in Raccoon City and something called the ‘Monitor’ programme.

“And you know all this…how?”

“Because I’m working with him.”

“Then why should I trust you?”

“Because I’m not working _for_ him, or for Vladimir, and I want to see them fall as much as you do.”

“And I’m supposed to take your word for that?”

“Leon, I would never directly cause harm to come to you.”

“Clever choice of words there.”

She frowned at him, narrowed her eyes into piercing expression of frustration.

“Leon,” she said, stretching out each syllable of his name. “I have my goals, you have yours. Here, they align, just like they did in Raccoon City. What happened was…nothing personal, I assure you. I want to see Umbrella fall the same as you do.”

 _Yes_ , he wanted to say. _But_ why _? Who_ do _you work for?_

“I know about Ginovaef,” he said instead. “Was supposed to have died in Raccoon City. Was working against Umbrella. Suddenly they welcome him back and he’s working with Vladimir? I’m not buying it.”

Now, Ada smiled.

“Vladimir was in Raccoon City at the end,” she explained. “I know this because that’s how I got out – hitched a ride. He was evacuating other agents throughout the city right until the bomb dropped – Ginovaef is a close personal friend of his, my guess is he picked him up too. As for his loyalty…that’s a question for someone who knows him better.”

“What do you want me to do with this?”

Ada was now sliding out of the booth, pulled a pair of slim black sunglasses out of her purse and slid them on with a single hand.

“What you do best,” she said.

He saw her shift, edge towards her exit, and a hand shot out before he knew what he was doing, wrapped loosely around her wrist. It was enough to stop her in her tracks, for her to glance down and then to the side with a sigh.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked, one of many questions neither of them had the time to work through. “On the platform. You armed me. Saved me.”

She did not deny it, but remained silent, looking directly at him through the dark lenses of her shades. He had wondered, over the years. Had even looked for her after the fact, hoping somehow that it had not been some delusional hope, that she had survived the fall, made it out.

“I was right about you. Whatever your goal, whoever you were working for-“

“You gambled a lot, you know,” she said. “I could have shot you, that would have been it. Yet you were so sure that I wouldn’t.”

He was. And he still didn’t know why. Part of him was willing to lay his life on the line to keep the sample from her grasp, sure, but why put himself in the line of fire like that? Why not toss it over the edge, why gamble so much on his gut?

“Think you’d save my life, patch me up, just to put a bullet in me yourself?”

“I owed you. I don’t like being in debt.”

“That why you kissed me too?”

He knew why she had kissed him. It was all part of her game. A young, naïve thing like him. An older, stronger woman like her. He’d spent the last three years kicking himself for not seeing it for what it was at the time. But she hesitated. Didn’t agree, didn’t shoot him down, just stared back, for a beat too long. And suddenly he wondered if he had been woefully, horribly wrong.

“Maybe I pitied you.”

Leon laughed.

“That supposed to hurt?”

“Does it?”

“Why are you here, really?”

“Because I trust you.”

“To do what you ask me to?”

“To do the right thing.”

She wrenched her hand from his, rose to her feet. For a moment, she lingered by the edge of the table, looked off down the café before turning to him one last time.

“It _is_ good to see you again,” she promised.

And then, she was gone.

Leon leaned back into the hard wood that lined the booth and sighed. The sudden absence of adrenaline drained him, brought tremors to his hands, sent his heart spinning in his chest. Benford had wanted him to relax, huh? Yeah, this ought to do it.

* * *

**January 28 th, 2003. Panama City, Panama.**

He’d promised to take her on a date. That was all Carlos could think of through that dark night, the dawn, and the days that followed. He’d promised to take her out and he never had. They’d always been ‘too busy’ or the time had ‘never been right’ but the truth was that they never really made the time, not for each other, not for themselves. And maybe that’s why it had all fallen apart. He sure thought so in the days that followed her departure, and in the weeks that he pulled apart their relationship, trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

It seemed a silly thing to dwell on as Jill rested in the wake of her infection, but it felt important. And therein was the change, the sudden realignment. He’d expected the usual defence mechanisms to snap back into place once her survival was assured, for the anger to bubble up again, but whatever had happened in the dead of night had been a reformation, not a reprieve. He’d spent three years hurt and angry over what she had done and now that he had finally let go, even for a brief moment, he found that the spaces didn’t fill with the same darkness, rather remained open for something else. It was unexpected, how much the threat of permanence put into perspective.

That perspective kept his head above water in the days that followed, kept him from drowning in the rush of unpleasantness Nicholai’s sudden reappearance had unleashed. They had all been ordered to take the week off, to recover from their injuries while Gutierrez and O’Brian worked on their next move and for once he took that directive to heart.

Jill was restless, but not in the way she had been back in 1999. It was a dim sense of irritation over one’s uselessness rather than an obsessive narrowing of vision. She was bedridden for much of the first few days, even after her discharge. The infection had hit harder this time, to the point where Carlos caught one of the science officers wondering aloud if little more than luck had carried her through. He didn’t care. She was alive, would stay that way for the foreseeable future, and that was all he needed to know.

And she was never alone. Neither Carlos nor Chris would allow that, and worked out between them a sort of system, one Jill quickly figured out but was too tired to go against or argue with.

By day four, she was up and about with her usual energy. They started eating out together, always the three of them, occasionally four. Chris had proposed a day trip here and there, but Carlos always turned them down, for reasons didn’t fully understand. Every time the event felt a little too close to a date, something inside of him would clench and he would take a single step back, wary, like he was poking the slumbering form of something banded in yellow stripes.

But he had promised her, hadn’t he? He had promised her a date, and why oh why could he not get that thought out of his head?

On the seventh day of their leave, he found himself staring into the mirror a little too intently, dragging fingertips along the coarse line of his jaw. He’d flipped the electric razor on twice already, brought it to his chin, but had been unable to fully commit.

“Could do it for you,” Billy suggested, his reflection smirking back from the arch of the bathroom doorway. He was dressed almost to the nines, his long hair slicked back and shining with product. He looked, quite frankly, like he would smell heavily of cologne, but Carlos wasn’t sure how much of that summation was down to the inexplicable irritation that set each one of his nerves on edge.

“Grow one of these, then weigh in,” he shot back.

For the third time, he brought the razor to his jaw but this time it met skin. When he was done, the wild tangle that had started to take hold was gone, a tidy spray of stubble left in its wake.

“Well, that was anti-climactic,” Billy said.

He’d never had the guts to shave it all away, not even in the army. It never stayed that way for long, and he couldn’t stand the fresh itch.

“You sure you’re okay?” Billy asked. “You’re tense as all hell.”

There was no clear-cut answer to that. The honest one was ‘no’, but that was _too_ honest, even for them.

Trouble was, Billy was only asking out of respect – he already knew.

“Will be once I get a few drinks down me.”

Drinks were the problem, and from Billy’s silence it was obvious that he was aware of this fact also. Dressed as usual Tuesday Night Drinks, they were really ‘Congratulations, You Were One Of The Lucky Ones’ drinks. More than that, they were ‘Congratulations, Jill, You’re Not Dead’ drinks. Half the BCA staff in Panama City had taken them up on the idea, and Jill herself had apparently been seen shopping the previous day. He’d seen this before, after harrowing missions, when not everyone who set out had come back. It was just their way of processing it all – get dressed up so you can convince yourself that you’re not drowning your sorrows.

He’d take any excuse for something like that, but something about tonight had him feeling like he was back in a chopper above Raccoon City, trying to convince himself that yeah, this was only the second time he’d flown but sure, he could outrun the detonation of a thermobaric weapon, no problem.

“Carlos!”

Billy had placed a hand on his shoulder, was close enough that the cologne theory was immediately disproven.

“You gotta talk to her, man,” he said. “This ain’t like you.”

“Already did,” said Carlos. “Said all I had to say, it’s all out in the open now.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

He didn’t know. It was all in his hands now – Jill wouldn’t take another step towards him, would wait for him to meet her halfway. There wasn’t anything he wanted more, buffered by her apologies and cotton-candy promises and he had never been afraid of pursuit, of putting himself out there and making that clear. So why now did he hesitate?

“Look,” said Billy when he said nothing. “I’m not gonna be your Agony Aunt, but you gotta do something. And I’m saying it has to be tonight. Either you admit that you’re still crazy about her or you tell her you’re moving on for good. Something’s gotta give or it’s gonna be you and we can’t go into whatever’s ahead with you running on half a tank.“

Real talk, huh? He appreciated the honesty, but it didn’t bring him any closer to knowing what that next move would be.

“She didn’t just break your heart, she wounded your pride. So trusting her is going to take some work, but you said yourself she’s trying to make it right. You want to know what I think?”

“Not really but I got a feeling you’re gonna tell me anyway.”

“Damn straight. I think you’d be an idiot if you let that wounded pride get in the way of this. You’re obviously still crazy about each other. So you need to hash it out and decide how you take this forward, or you’re gonna lose each other again and this time it’s really gonna hurt.”

* * *

Jill viewed her recovery with a little less relief than Carlos did. Sure, the infection cleared but the effects lingered for most of their downtime. Muscles required coaxing, coffee became medication, and the nightmares…those she did not miss. As the week drew to a close, she felt only that she needed another to clear the fog from her brain.

She did not dwell on old promises as Carlos did, but rather looked forward to one bright spot on the horizon – the drinks O’Brian had referred to as a ‘mandatory recovery exercise’. The day before, she had slipped out of the hotel with her credit card and returned hours later with a new outfit and a purse full of cosmetics in what she had convinced herself was a more personal ‘mandatory recovery exercise’. And it worked, for the most part. After a little concealer to hide the bags beneath her eyes and a little embellishment of the lashes, when she looked in the mirror she felt for the first time in almost a week that someone familiar was looking back at her.

“This isn’t a vacation, huh?” Chris teased, catching her once again fixing her hair.

“Want me to go down in sweatpants and a T-shirt?” she fired back.

He didn’t respond, but she caught sight of his reflection stepping behind hers as she took two steps back and regarded herself in the full-length mirror on the wall.

She wore a pale blue dress, light and airy enough to be pleasant in the heat and casual enough that she could feel fancy without seeming overdressed. Still, she fidgeted nervously with the hem, catching sight of the ugly wound on her arm and another just below her right knee, both still bearing unsightly sutures.

“One foot in front of the other, remember?” Chris said.

Yeah. One step at a time. Nice and slow. Take it easy. It was like nobody here knew her at all.

“Hey,” he said, and she turned at a light touch to her shoulder. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s running through your head.”

“Cheap coming from you, don’t you think?”

It wasn’t an attack, wasn’t an insult. He even laughed at it, rolled his eyes.

“I don’t have to listen to me, though. You do.”

The bar was filling up when they approached from the lobby, the chandeliers, marble and heavy gold accents far from the rough and ready bars they so often found themselves in back home. Most of the team was already there, O’Brian tipping an imaginary hat as they approached, but her eyes scanned the nearby tables, looking for something she wasn’t quite sure she knew what to do with if found.

He was already there, of course, deep in conversation with Gutierrez, fighting back a smirk as the Captain gesticulated wildly before him. When he caught her eye, he froze, smile still in place. After a beat, Gutierrez turned, saw her standing there, and said something to Carlos that raised his brows and stole his attention back.

She would talk to him, she resolved, about the things they had been dancing around for the last week. She would edge towards the kiss, towards the words she had uttered, so sure her end was nigh. She would find out if that was real, or a conjuration of her fevered brain. But not right now. Now, she needed a drink.

Chris remained with O’Brian, assuring her he’d join her in a second, as she turned to make her way towards the long, brightly lit bar. It was oddly quiet this early in the evening, and the bartenders faced the wall of gleaming bottles and glistening glasses, slicing fruit and chatting amongst themselves. There was one person sitting on Jill’s side of the bar, someone she had not expected to see, nursing a drink they didn’t seem to know what to do with, looking like a tourist in chinos and a polo shirt.

She caught Leon in a daydream when she approached, and he straightened up as soon as he saw her.

“Nice to see you made it,” she said, not dishonestly. Their time together had been short, but he had stuck around at camp long enough to suggest he was as much concerned about them as he was whatever he was about to talk Gutierrez and O’Brian into giving them. That was something she was willing to work with.

“I, uh…didn’t,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Came here to find you, actually…but apparently I’ve crashed a party.”

Jill looked to the others, to Chris and O’Brian laughing over something one of the support agents had said.

“You were looking for _me_?”

He stared at her for a moment, his blue eyes catching hers, then falling down over the dress she wore, the purse she clutched, and then over to the others behind her.

“Yeah, but it’s not that important,” he said.

“If it’s got you hanging out in a hotel bar hoping I might pass through it must be?”

“This feels more important,” he clarified.

She wanted to argue, but she had made a promise, both to Chris and to herself. No work worries, no distractions. No worming down rabbit holes without reason.

So, she ordered her drink – a fruity cocktail with a bitterly pretentious name – and slid into a leather-bound stool at the bar, stayed to chat for a while.

He asked about the BCA and she coached her answers before the conversation turned to Claire, and to Sherry. They skirted close to the subject of Raccoon City once or twice, but he always steered them back, out of respect for the night or fear of what lay at the end of that road, she couldn’t be certain. The one thing that was clear at the end of it all was that he was just another survivor, another statistic, another head full of nightmares that begun and ended with Umbrella. She didn’t need words to tell her that.

“How are you holding up?” she asked eventually, when his posture relaxed, and his jokes ventured more towards the bold.

He looked at her through a smile that shrank slowly, like a deflating balloon.

“Well enough to not ruin your night.”

There was a moment where she considered pushing it, forgetting in the wake of friendly conversation that they were still strangers after all. But it wasn’t her place, was it? And maybe she was doing what she always did – reaching out, trying to help, not thinking if the person on the other end wanted or even needed it.

“Would take a lot for that to happen.”

“Still. I’m not being that person. Barely pulled it back it the first time.”

She didn’t know why it took her so long to latch on to it, but something dropped in that moment. A heavy hint, wrapped in golden twine.

“You have something, don’t you?” she asked. “Intel. That’s why you’re here?”

He said nothing.

“Why do you need _me_? Why not the others?

Still nothing.

“Leon, you can tell me, I promise you it won’t ruin my night.”

When Leon laughed, it felt familiar, not in the sense of having heard it before, but in the knowing exasperation held within, tempered by an understanding that birthed amusement. He reached across the bar for a white napkin, pulled a blue plastic pen out of his pocket and wrote a number upon it.

“This is my number,” he said, pausing midway through to look up at her. “For work purposes, purely. Call me in the morning, we’ll talk then.”

She looked at the neat swoops of his handwriting and felt her brow furrow of its own accord.

“If this is important-“

“I just need your input,” he said, with an easy smile that didn’t convince her but at least assuaged her sudden urgency. “As someone who knew Ginovaef, however briefly.”

With a sigh, she folded the napkin and pushed it into the depths of her purse for safekeeping.

“Carlos knew him better than I did,” she said. “May want to talk to him too.”

Leon looked over her shoulder and the corners of his mouth twisted upwards just a little.

“Maybe I will,” he said. “For now, think I better make myself scare. Before I make your boyfriend’s hitlist.”

He gave but the subtlest of nods, and she turned back to the gathering, saw Carlos staring over Billy’s shoulder in their direction, the hard line of his brows casting an uncharacteristically threatening shadow upon his otherwise handsome features.

She turned back to Leon with a shake of the head and a smile of her own.

“Stay,” she urged. “Mingle.” Leon raised an eyebrow – ‘you sure?’. “You’re already here; make a night of it. We have to stick together, people like us.”

Leon smiled again, brighter this time.

“You know, I uh- called Claire the other day. Told her I’d met your brother…and you. Seems she really likes you. Think I’m starting to see why.”

“Ditto.”

Jill returned to Chris with another drink in hand, a pleasant buzz already set within her. Carlos was still deep in conversation, holding an empty glass, glancing occasionally over his shoulder towards the bar, only to be drawn back into the conversation again. The night, as it transpired, was not destined to go to plan. Jill stayed with Chris, mostly, and shared jokes with O’Brian, Alvarez, a few of the other agents, and then Leon when he made his way over. Billy drifted past a time or two, but never with Carlos.

Their eyes met more than once, searching for one another across the bar. A time or two, Carlos managed to pull himself away from his colleagues, even made towards her once with a smile, only to immediately be blindsided by someone else. The amusement drowned the disappointment within her and as the evening matured, she found that she didn’t mind, that the time to catch up with everyone and just let her hair down was all that she really needed. They had found one another again and this time she wasn’t running away. They had all the time in the world.

It was as she polished off her fourth drink, the tropical tang watered down by melting ice, that she felt a gentle hand on her hip, the warmth of a body behind hers, and low voice spoke quietly in her ear.

“Want to get out of here?”

Carlos spoke like he was uttering something sacred, something meant for no ears but hers. Like a fool, she considered it for a second. Wondered exactly what he meant by it before she realised that the answer would have been the same either way.

“Yes.”

Nobody noticed them slip away, or if they did, they said nothing. And neither did Carlos, until they were free of the hotel, safe on the street, and he let out a long swoop of a breath.

“Thought I’d never get away,” he said.

“You seem like a popular guy.”

He winced at this.

“Lots of people with a lot to say and nothing for me to do but listen.”

It was a lot darker outside, even with the lights of the hotel. Cars came and went, and the doormen stood silently at their posts. A quiet night with the promise of life. She’d not felt this way in some time, like she wanted to tear her way through the town and deal with the rest in the morning. Maybe it was the alcohol already in her system, maybe it was Carlos, she didn’t know. All she did know was that she hadn’t felt excitement like this since New Year’s Eve 1998, when Carlos had dragged her out of their dingy apartment in NYC and showed her the lights of the city. She had been so sure she was content with watching the ball drop on their tiny television but the mere thought of that when they were so close to the real thing hadn’t sat right with him. She _needed_ to see the real thing, and he would carry her all the way there if he had to, so was she coming?

“So where are we going?”

They had stopped just out of view of the entrance, and he looked around, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

“Uh,” he said, dragging the syllable out as a look of concentration fell upon him. “I know a place.”

“You didn’t have a plan, did you?”

“Pssh, where’s the fun in having a plan?”

She took in his awkward posture, the way his shoulders drew inwards, the way he still stared at a point somewhere over her shoulder and not directly at her. Apparently where alcohol had steeled her nerves, it had only served to set his on edge, and though she tried hard not to draw conclusions from that, how could she not?

So, emboldened both by this realisation and her own buzz, she reached up, placed fingertips gently against the shallow stubble on his jaw, and turned his face towards her, gave him no choice but to look her in the eye.

“Is this a date?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Hey,” he said, perhaps softer than he had intended. “If I was taking you on a date, you think I wouldn’t plan that shit out, down to the detail?”

She considered this, thought of the man she had known all those years ago.

“I would,” she said. “You wouldn’t.”

Carlos laughed, and for a moment she saw that man before her, felt the comfort simply being around him had provided in times whose darkness she wouldn’t fully understand until it was too late.

“Then maybe it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You were all determined to prove me wrong about the quieting of the fandom, weren't you? XD Thank you so much for your response to the last chapter, I was a little bit overwhelmed! I'll be honest, I think the pressure I was putting on myself to get weekly updates out was a big part of my block too as I enjoyed writing this chapter more than I have enjoyed writing anything in a while, and I am much happier with the quality too. So thank you so much for your patience, it really does mean a lot.
> 
> This chapter has actually been cut in half. It turned out to be a lot longer than I had envisioned in my head. I did end up rewriting it a few times trying to fit it all in, and of course ended up going for the first iteration. On the plus side, it means I can really flesh out the second half and set things up nicely for the final arc of the story.


	11. Alone Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry it took so long again to get this one out. I've been dealing with a lot of personal stuff this past month, and you wouldn't believe how many times I rewrote parts of this chapter - I could probably cobble together another just from the things I cut! I really wanted this chapter to be done right and I hope it was worth the wait.
> 
> There is another reason for the wait, and hopefully you will all like this one! If you hang about on Twitter or Tumblr, you've probably noticed that there is a Valeveira fanzine being curated. Well, I was selected to take part and I am so excited and have already been working hard on my contributions :D. I will be contributing a short story along with art for both the SFW and NSFW versions, and a merch design. There are so many talented people working on it, I feel so privileged to be working alongside them and I'm even more excited to enjoy it when it's all done. Please hop over to valeveirazine on the above platforms to follow updates on that. I will be working on all of that alongside this but I'm hoping that they won't disrupt one another as we are jumping into the final arc for this story and are getting so close to the end.
> 
> As always thank you all for your views, comments and support. You make the more stressful days worth it and encourage me to strive to provide even better content, I truly can't stress how much I appreciate each and every one of you <3\. I don't expect the next chapter to take as long as this one to get out

**September 29 th, 2000. Medellin, Colombia.**

Two months with barely a few days of leave strung together; such an ordeal often called for loud music and louder antics, but Carlos and Billy found solace in a much quieter place. The crowds of partygoers had already moved on, leaving the couples, the loners and the after-work sorrow-drowners behind, but the atmosphere was still light, and the two girls that had settled comfortably into their company still lingered in a cloud of perfume and flirtation.

The drinks were starting to go to Carlos’s head, but he managed to make his way to the bar, his spirit thirsting for more than his liver could handle.

“Hey, hey, hey!” cried Billy, announcing his presence with a heavy slap to his friend’s back. “You ordered yet?”

Carlos smiled, even as his friend’s dizzy weight pulled at his shoulder, threatened to throw him off-balance. He signalled to the bartender, held up two fingers and reached for his wallet. He’d lost count of how many had been knocked back, knew only that Billy drank faster and harder than he did, and his own sense of reality was starting to warp at the edges. They had promised they would let their hair down and maybe this hadn’t been the night they had planned but damn it had been a good one so far – who were they to stem such a heady flow?

Two years had passed since the shit in Raccoon City, almost to the day, and he still marvelled over how far he had come in that time. From lost and unfocused on his cousin’s sofa in NYC to his own apartment and a steady job that maybe didn’t pay handsomely but for once made him feel like he was doing some good in the world.

A year ago, maybe a sticky sense of pessimism would have coached in him wariness, brought him to question why, this week of all weeks, he felt good and why did he think it would last? But he had come so far even since then, rising within the ranks of the BCA, from a well-meaning rookie to one half of the most successful partnership in the Central & South American division. Nothing could take the wind from those sails.

That was the chief thought in his mind before he glanced to the television behind the bar. For whatever reason, the staff kept it set to a channel that played out world news on repeat – even, apparently, on a Friday night. That particular Friday night he saw in yellowish hues a face he knew, from a memory that rushed back to an aching, twisting prominence. The slope of her cheeks, the hair parted absently to one side, the fierceness in her eyes as she addressed someone just beyond the camera’s reach.

“Hey,” he said, quietly. Then, louder: “Hey! Turn it up. The TV, turn it up!”

The bartender acquiesced and the audio of the newscast rose to a level barely audible over the music.

“It’s not good enough,” said the woman on the screen. “Tens of thousands of lives were lost in Raccoon City alone. You put a price on that, you’re no better than they are. We need to set a precedent here, show companies like Umbrella that they _will_ be held responsible for their actions.”

Off-camera, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“Miss Valentine, with claims of cover-ups and subterfuge rampant in these trials, if your damning accusations are true, are you not afraid of being silenced, as you have claimed so many others have been?”

One corner of her lips twisted in an arc of a smile as she looked to the side, laughed, and then turned back to the reporter.

“They tried,” she said. “They’re welcome to give it another shot. Make sure you put that on air.”

“Disgraced law enforcement agent or champion of a greater cause?” said a slim brunette newscaster as Jill stepped out of frame and the camera panned back to a small gathering of journalists outside of a grey-bricked building. “Opinions are still divided. That was Jill Valentine, a former agent of the Raccoon City Police Department’s Special Tactics and Rescue Service. Miss Valentine and her colleagues today saw their testimony examined as the courts delve deeper into the circumstances leading to the destruction of Raccoon City almost two years ago. The surviving S.T.A.R.S. members allege that corruption within the City’s own police department led to the deaths of seven of their teammates in July of 1998, and to deliberate and malicious inaction that saw the city’s police department incapable of handling the epidemic that soon followed. With much of the evidence destroyed along with the city, the odds are against them, but the tenacity of Miss Valentine and her colleagues has certainly captured the attention of many who previously held little interest in this increasingly bitter political exchange. I am January Gibson, and you’re watching EBYN News.”

The trials. He had forgotten all about the trials. When they had begun, he and Billy had been asked to draft their own statements and while Billy had understandably refused, Carlos had drafted what he could remember and left it to fate. He had never been asked to testify in person, so great was the wealth of evidence such as his, and he doubted Jill had either, but damn it was like her to have wanted to be there as they choked the life from them.

And she looked good. Damn good. Held herself with a confidence she had lacked when they had last spoke, kept those nerves hidden behind a steely gaze and hard tone.

He felt sick. It wasn’t the alcohol, it was…something else. Something that tightened in his chest and dropped cold to the pit of his stomach. It was a weakness he hadn’t felt in some time – an unwelcome pain he had almost forgotten.

“Carlos?”

Billy’s hand touched the bare skin of his arm, but he barely felt it.

“Hey, are you okay?”

He nodded.

“Feel sick’s all,” he said.

He looked back to the screen, to where a line-up of static, vaguely familiar faces was now overlaid with the bored tones of the studio casters, weighing in on the day’s events.

Part of him, he was ashamed to admit, hoped to see her again, to take another good look at her, confirm that she was doing ok, get one last hit. But it resided alongside a part that recoiled at the sight of her, drew everything precious close and responded only with a feral hiss when questioned.

“Hey,” another, softer, feminine voice spoke behind them. Carlos didn’t turn, but Billy did. “We know this place open ‘til 4am. Want to join us? Or…we could go somewhere a little quieter?”

He’d not thought about Jill Valentine for some time, he realised. Had almost forgotten what she looked like. Because he was over her, had chalked the disaster that had been their relationship up to his shit luck and moved on. No point in dwelling on what would never truly have lasted.

“Yeah, uh…” Billy said, looking to Carlos and then back to the girls. “Ah shit… Sorry ladies, my buddy here isn’t feeling too good, gonna see him home. Maybe another time?”

“Shame…”

Billy turned back to him with a heavy sigh.

“Come on,” he urged. “You owe me now. What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Maybe he had. He wasn’t sure anymore.

* * *

**January 28 th, 2003. Panama City, Panama**

Carlos led her away from the bright lights of bars brimming with tourists to an area no less vibrant but a little less overbearing on the senses. Through an alleyway and up a flight of stairs, their journey ended at a bar behind a heavy wooden door, where the gold, marble and mahogany of the hotel were replaced with heavy oak furnishings, hand painted murals, and a smattering of green plants.

It was much quieter here too. Music with a comfortable familiarity pumped out of the speakers, and while a few individuals swayed on the spot there was no dance floor, and the patronage leaned more towards groups in for the night rather than passing tourist on a sponsored bar crawl.

He knew this place well – owned by an old friend, he trusted that the drinks were good and there would be a corner quiet enough to slide into.

Calling the damn thing a date had been a mistake, but he’d have been lying if he’d claimed that wasn’t how he had wanted to approach it. It was a test; for him, or her, or them, he didn’t know, but it was a test all the same. The first mark was on him – take her to the wrong place and it gave the wrong impression, set the wrong tone. Take her to a bar leaking pounding basslines onto the street, where they couldn’t hear one another speak, and he may as well have just invited her back to his room. They could have gone for a walk along a beach, sure, but that put too much pressure on them to fill the silence and you never could trust what came out under pressure. No, they needed somewhere calm and quiet. And _he_ needed somewhere comfortable because the dance of his nerves was dizzying.

“You should try one of these,” Jill suggested, holding up her Manhattan before taking a delicate sip.

Carlos looked down at his own drink – a caipirinha. Safe. Another comfort disguised as a rum base. What the hell was wrong with him?

She hadn’t closed the distance between them, but that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? He’d sat in the corner of their booth, angled in a way that discouraged such a thing, but there he was, wishing she’d ignore that and move a little closer anyway.

“Knew you’d like it,” he said. “Told you, this is a well thought-out, well-planned evening. If you were wearing socks they would be in trouble.”

Jill, part way through another slightly less delicate sip, chocked on her cocktail.

“If I was-“

She shook her head, leaned back into the cushions of the booth.

“Having second thoughts?” he asked.

“Never.”

She smiled, and something shifted inside of him. That’s how it had all started, right? With a smile. Or was it the joke that had started it? Teasing her for worrying about him when he’d been out of his own damn mind barely fifteen minutes earlier. Either way, she had smiled, and suddenly he was smitten. Because she was a ball of rage, burning through everything the city threw at her, spitting venom at anyone who got close, and now she was _smiling_? God, if she could smile in the midst of that hell then maybe there was hope after all.

Carlos shifted his hips, changed the angle of his body, exposed more of the hard corner beside him – enough that she could slide in if she wanted to, or at least draw a little closer.

Because she had smiled, after everything, and even his damn pride couldn’t worry that away.

* * *

There were little things Jill had forgotten over the years, things she didn’t realise the significance or sentimentality of until they reappeared. His scent was one, and that was a strange thing for her to acknowledge, let alone admit. She couldn’t attribute any notes or apply any descriptors at all, only fleeting feelings that enveloped her with their warmth then dashed away a moment later. Perhaps memories more than feelings. Sensations. Comfort, longing, _safety_. His voice was another, deep yet light, warm even when the words it spoke were cold.

So, for the most part, she just let him talk. About his family, his life in Medellin, the BCA, even the apologies he fired when he realised just how deep into work politics they had strayed on what was meant to be an evening about _them_.

Somewhere along the line she had moved closer too, and his arm had raised to rest against the back of the booth behind her shoulder. It was a game of chicken that neither wanted to lose. But each time he opened up a little further, each inch the wall lowered, the closer she came to calling it, to kissing him and letting that be that.

But she wasn’t quite there. Not through lack of will on her own account, but from hesitance on his. Every now and then he would catch himself, realise he was laughing too much, leaning in too close, smiling a little too widely, and he would reign it back in.

“You want another?” he asked, when ice rattled in the bottom of her glass as she placed it back on the table between them.

“No,” she said.

Carlos raised an eyebrow, a fleeting look of worry flickering across his features.

“You…want to head back?”

She shook her head.

“You promised me a date, and all I’ve had is cocktails and conversation,” she said, emboldened by the alcohol that was now her co-pilot.

His eyebrows raised further, and a look of mild alarm met one of amusement.

“Sounds like a date to me,” he said.

“Metaphorical socks are still on.”

He laughed now, and the arm that had almost been around her retreated.

“There’s a nice beach nearby,” he said. “Probably pretty quiet this time of night. But…that might be more conversation and if you’re bored…”

“Never bored. But you-” she prodded a solid bicep with her index finger “-need to loosen up and I think I know the perfect thing for it.”

“Really?”

“Really. Gonna need a little help though.”

The instructions she gave him were clear – find a place, any place, with music that would get them both moving. She didn’t want music she could hear in a club back in Chicago, she wanted something better, and she wanted it somewhere they wouldn’t stick to the floor.

They wandered the streets for a while, got close to a place or two before he would frown and pull her away, shaking his head and muttering something that sounded like “no good”. And somewhere along the way his hand found hers, and when she laced her fingers through his he didn’t pull away.

Eventually they found a place near the aforementioned beach, where the music felt right and the atmosphere was conducive to…whatever she was looking for. All ulterior motives had gone out of the window at this point. She had him back, had her friend back, and she wanted to make the most of that, to try and pull something out of this that would help them both, romantic or not. So, via a single shot each at the bar, they found the dancefloor.

And that man could move. It took a while to work him up to it, for him to stop glancing around like he was looking for a punchline. But with another drink, and a little loosened inhibition from herself, she found that suddenly she wasn’t the one leading this chapter of the evening.

“You’re full of surprises,” she told him, when the music mellowed and laughter carried them back towards the bar.

“What, you think a South American man can’t dance?” he said, catching his breath while signalling to the bartender.

“Not at all. A 6-foot-something, hundred- and eighty-pound merc on the other hand…”

Carlos laughed.

“Two hundred, actually,” he clarified. “And I’m legit these days, you know that.”

Jill blinked, tilted her head, observed the way he leaned on the bar, and how the muscles beneath his shirt strained against the fabric when they flexed. Then, lost in the dizzy haze of something that might have been infatuation, might have been tequila, she reached out to squeeze one of those arms, felt the contours and curves with delicate fingertips and a slightly firmer thumb.

Carlos didn’t pull away. He turned away, sure, but only to pass an unheard order to the bartender.

“It’s not all there,” he told her, with a smile that felt a little bold. “Food’s great in this corner of the world. Stay here long enough, you’ll see.”

“That an invitation?”

“A suggestion.”

“You did promise to show me where you grew up.”

She felt the muscles beneath her touch tense at this.

“Promised to show you my country,” he corrected. “You want the best of it, you don’t want to see where I grew up.”

“It was you I was interested in,” she said. The bartender placed two glasses of clear liquid before them, and when she looked down into hers the room seemed to swim around her much like the ripples on the surface. “Never wanted you to pretty that up.”

For perhaps the first time, he seemed truly lost for words. Didn’t reach for his glass, didn’t pull a joke from whatever endless well he kept them in, waiting for the right moment. And when he looked up at her, it was with a softness that was utterly sobering.

“Drink,” he urged.

She did, brought the glass to her lips, took a long sip and-

“This is water,” she noted. Carlos nodded, drank half of his glass in one gulp.

“You’ve drank a lot,” he pointed out. “Night ain’t over yet, and I don’t want to explain to Chris why I had to carry you back.”

Jill raised an eyebrow but did as she was told. The liquid was cold and soothing, and by the time the glass was empty the room felt a little more stable. Her brain, too, finally caught on to the words she had loosed into the night, and she felt suddenly embarrassed, like she’d revealed too much, loosened a buckle on her armour and left something exposed.

“Finally pulled together a plan?” she teased, testing those waters with bravery that faltered.

Carlos smiled, then reached out to pull the left strap of her dress back up over her shoulder from where it had fallen. She hadn’t even noticed. But she noticed the warmth in his touch, felt how it lingered after the fact. Was this her moment? Was it her turn to close the distance between them and-

Soft lips pressed to her cheek, to the bony part just below her eye. He had to brush a few strands of hair away to get there, but he did it so gently, so smoothly, she barely noticed.

 _‘Your move,’_ his action seemed to dare. Or did it? Was that voice her own, urging her on? She didn’t know, didn’t care, leaned forward as he pulled away and caught his lips with her own. There was hesitance, but only a moment of it. More surprise than anything insidious, and when it passed she felt him give against her. He was as gentle as always, did not press for more than she offered. When they parted, he was closer to her, and she felt a sigh pass through his entire body. She knew this man well, knew how much he was holding himself back. She’d have been lying if she had said that it didn’t thrill her, to know that after all these years and everything she had done, she could still stir that sort of reaction within him. But it carried with it an awful responsibility, one that chilled her in equal measure: that of a breakable thing, placed with the utmost trust in her hands.

“Got another dance in you?” he asked, the tide line of his smile a little higher behind those dark eyes now.

Her ankles were sore, pinch points of her feet rubbed raw by her new shoes.

“Yes,” she said.

* * *

The bars in this area of the city opened early and closed late – last orders were still perhaps an hour away, but already the crowds had begun to thin as patrons moved from the bars to the clubs, or to a quieter spot to stare out over Panama Bay. A healthy buzz caged the nerves that had followed Carlos from the hotel bar, kept them locked down as they walked a quiet path above the beach, slower now that Jill’s shoes dangled from one hand.

She yelped in surprise when he swept her up, one arm beneath her knees, almost tossed said shoes over the edge of the path and down into the sand below. She swore, tried to wriggle free, but could do nothing but wrap her arms around his neck so that she dangled a little less helplessly from his frame.

“Are you serious?” she cried.

“As a heart attack.”

“That what you’re trying to give me? Put me down!”

“Nu-uh. Think you’re gonna be good on whatever fresh hell they send us into if you tear your feet to shreds? I gotcha.”

“I’m afraid of heights.”

“I’m not that tall.”

“My dress is riding up!”

He checked.

“It isn’t.”

“People are staring.”

“Let them stare.”

She grumbled a little more and then, unmistakeably, settled against him with a quiet huff.

Her weight in his arms felt…right. There was no other way to describe it. _Right_. Like the rest of the night had felt, like he’d not noticed just how off-kilter his world had been until it was righted again.

He carried her to an area open onto the beach below, with a stone bench that looked out over the tide. He’d walked past it at sunset a time or two and the bench he lowered her down onto had always been occupied by a couple, arm in arm, head on shoulder, sitting in silence. There was no sun now, only the moon and the lights of the city behind them. But she leaned into him when he joined her, linked her arm around his and rested her head on his shoulder with a soft hum.

Now that he was still, Carlos found that the world around him was not. He was not drunk, but couldn’t exactly claim to be sober, though he was sure that wasn’t it. Not the whole of it, anyway.

Jill’s perfume surrounded him, dissipated in a cruel breeze when she moved, sat upright and began to fix her hair. She was beautiful, he noted, not for the first time that night. She wore the moonlight like a crown, and the absent expression that befell her was as endearing to him as it was effortless to her.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he said. “Have I told you that?”

She turned to him, fingers pulled halfway down the length of her hair, and smiled.

“About three times. But you can say it again, I kinda like hearing it.”

“You look beautiful tonight.”

It felt important that she knew.

“You look pretty handsome yourself,” she said. Maybe it was a purr? Had he imagined that? Maybe he _was_ drunk. His senses felt all over the place, his mind muddled. Here was this beautiful lady who was giving him all the right signals, and yet here _he_ was…thinking of reasons not to respond in kind.

He wanted to kiss her, to pull her close, remind himself how soft her curves felt against him, but she was a beautiful thing and beautiful things were often deadly, weren’t they? It was a stupid thought, but he’d been bitten once and though she was honest and open and kind and apologetic, something within him, a fearful cowering thing, screeched caution.

_‘You know what happened. You know where she left you. Is this what you really want? Or are you just feeling nostalgic?’_

“I’ve had a really good night,” she told him – a truth preceding a giggle that revealed another one.

_‘She’s had a bit to drink, what’s saying it’s not just three Screwballs and a Mai Tai talking?’_

“Me too.”

_‘Yeah, you could have one night for old’s time’s sake. But is that gonna be enough? When she leaves again are you gonna be able to let her go?’_

“You know, Chris suggested taking some leave after this assignment,” she said. “Make a holiday of it. I’m starting to warm to the idea.”

“Jill Valentine, taking a break?”

“Don’t! You sound just like him.”

It was a joke, and she responded appropriately but there was weight to her words, something raw, touched upon in a way that broke through the veil of spirits.

He reached up, pulled the strap of her dress – which had fallen _again_ – back up over her shoulder. Her skin was smooth and warm, and maybe he was imagining it, but he could have sworn that she leaned into his touch.

“Would it be so bad?”

Her lips parted, like she had considered making a joke then decided against it.

“You know,” she said. “I always thought it would. Figured the day I took leave would be the one the world went to shit.”

“World’s already gone to shit.”

“Even more reason to not rest. Always someone somewhere who needed me.”

Carlos felt emotion translate to word, work its way up his throat, clawing for freedom. He caged it, inspected it, considered it…

“Maybe that someone was just never in the right place,” he said.

This time when she looked at him there was something intimately breakable behind her eyes. Something fragile; unusual on someone like her. It was a side he had known well once, had been trusted with the way she had trusted him with her life all those years ago.

“What is this?” she asked. “I…keep thinking maybe it’s the start of something. But there’s moments where it feels like the end of something too.”

The whole night had been working up to this question, hadn’t it? And he was so sure he knew how to answer, but now…

He knew what he wanted. What he didn’t know was whether he was capable of asking for it, of taking it if offered.

“I don’t know,” he answered, honestly. He owed her that much. “Thought I did, but… I just know I had a great time tonight.”

Was that enough? It didn’t feel like it. And this was their last chance, right? The mission was drawing to a close and when it did she’d ship back to the States and they’d run out of excuses to make things right. He’d ignore her the way he had in those early years and that would be that.

She sighed, dissatisfied. But she didn’t push it. It was almost enough to pull more from him, to push him that one step further, pride be damned. But Billy had been right, as he often was. Love came too easily. Trust: that was a little more stubborn.

“You remember New York?” he asked. Jill nodded.

“I remember that shitty apartment,” she said. “How it was always cold. The café ‘round the corner. New Year at Times Square…”

“Think that was the night I fell in love with you,” he said, against that base instinct that tried to quell his eagerness to admit so much when tomorrow was assured this time. “Was the first time I’d seen you let go, let yourself have fun, live in the moment.”

Jill mused on this for a moment, closed her eyes, savoured his words.

“I think…same,” she said in a voice so heavy he wondered for a moment if she had to force these things out too, if perhaps in this at least they were on the same page. “I remember your arms around me, the fireworks overhead. It was the first night since…since it all began where I didn’t think about them, not once. It was just you and me and…I just wish I’d realised sooner how important that was. What it meant.”

Carlos reached for her hand, took it in his, squeezed when her fingers curled around his own. This was the honesty he’d wanted all those years ago. More than that…this was that Jill, the one he’d seen that night, carefree and lively, trusting someone else, letting them in.

“I, uh…told you I went back there, after you left. Stayed with my cousin a while. I…wasn’t fun to be around, not for a long while. Drank too much, slept too much. Then he kicked my ass into gear, made me go to this…this ‘Raccoon City Survivors’ group at this rec centre in Brooklyn. It was hell, but it helped, y’know, talking to others that’d been through the same shit, realising I wasn’t alone in that. Kinda…made me understand a bit more. Not just about me but…’bout what you went through too.”

“I’m sorry I left you to that. I should have thought of you, and I didn’t and-“

“I’m not fishing for an apology, Jill. I’m just…I’m trying to explain what it was like. Why…the first time I saw you, on TV, after so long of not thinking about you…I…it was like you’d just left. Why, when I saw you in Yaviza it was the same. I got over that shit, but I never got over _you_. I told myself it was because that wound went too deep, but I don’t think it was. I don’t think I wanted to. Because yeah, it sucked, but we made good memories too. Like tonight…there’s another. And…I want more nights like tonight. Not sure how feasible that is, but hey, when have I ever thought things through?”

The good times were worth the bad, weren’t they? And they weren’t the same people they were back then. Now, it could work. _Would_ work. He truly believed in that. The rest was up to them.

“What are you saying?”

Carlos frowned. He didn’t think he could make it any clearer, didn’t know how to. So, he kissed her. Pulled her close, firmly enough that whatever words she had held for further argument dissolved with a surprised “mmpf” against him. She softened, parted her lips, let him kiss her the way he needed to, spilling everything where words just didn’t cut it.

They sat there a while longer, and no further words were exchanged. They felt superfluous at this point, perhaps sharp enough to break this tenuous thing that had formed between them. At one point, her head fell against his shoulder, both arms looped around one of his. And as the night grew quieter, as the passage of time sobered them both, he realised that her alertness had dipped, that her breathing had slowed to gentle swells.

“C’mon,” he urged, to a squeaky groan of protest. “We should get back. You ok to walk?”

“If I say no, will you carry me again?”

She walked, shoes once again strapped to feet that apparently smarted a little less now. But they still meandered slowly towards their destination, down the path above the beach, beneath stars that had been absent that winter night in New York. The hotel was quieter when the stone of the footpath became tile became carpet. In the bar, the last stragglers of the BCA remained, Chris and Billy among them, lounging in a booth against the back wall, nursing the last of their drinks.

It was relief that snuck upon him now, winding its way around the pleasantness that had bloomed in his chest.

“You on seventh too?” Jill asked when the elevator doors shut out the quiet ambience of the lobby. There was awkwardness in the way she spoke, stilted like the words didn’t quite match her intent.

“I am. Gonna walk me back to my room? Keep me safe?”

“Used to be my job, didn’t it? Keeping you safe.”

He laughed, pretended to be wounded.

When the doors slid open again, an endless corridor stretched before them, with red carpet, white walls and heavy oak doors on either side. This was it. The end of the road, the last mile, the…

Jill stepped out before he did and worked her strappy shoes off her feet again, sighing when her bare soles sank into the plush carpet.

“Gonna regret these in the morning,” she said, holding her shoes up with one hand.

“Offer to carry you still stands.”

Jill shook her head, took the lead until they stopped at a door halfway down the corridor.

“This is me,” she said.

Carlos looked down the corridor, to where his own room awaited. His hesitance, he realised, had left him in a predicament. One where he wasn’t ready for the night to end, still had so much more left to say, yet he still felt far from ready. Maybe things like this couldn’t be rushed. Maybe they needed time to work out the creases, to ease into. They’d waited four years, what difference did a few more days make?

But there was a pull too, one that may as well have been a gravity well of its own, drawing him in, tempting him, brushing aside that fear, that doubt, promising him that it was stupid, misguided, _wrong_. Because this was Jill. The only thing in this world he was sure about, and he knew better than to assume that tomorrow was guaranteed.

She leaned back against the door, looked up at him, waited for his move. Chris was downstairs, they both knew that – the room beyond that door was empty, and every second they wasted here was a second lost.

“You should stay,” he said. That voice, the one nagging away in the back of his mind, began to chunter and whine to itself. Another sighed, called him cheap. “After the mission. Stay a little while. We can figure this out-“

“No,” she said. A ball of white-hot prickly pressure forced the air from his lungs. It was a pain he had felt before, one entwined around two devastating words. “I can’t commit to a maybe. I have my pride too. You want me or you don’t, it’s that simple. No more games.”

The doubt pulled memories to the fore – snippets of fear, loneliness, anger. He could feel the rough weave of his cousin’s sofa against his cheek, taste the bitter stain of stale beer on his tongue. He heard unfamiliar voices, each laying out their own trauma, inviting him to add his own, to relive that week in September, to open the door to his demons, alone, unarmed. The anger, the confusion – how could she leave him _alone_? After everything, after all of that, without a word?

But that wasn’t her fault. He knew that, always had. The doubt she had piled on top of it, sure. But the rest…she was the dam keeping all that back, but that was never fair. Blaming her was his own flaw, his way of shifting blame for the sake of that _damn_ pride.

And so what? He had meant every word he had said in the cabin, nothing had changed but his perspective of the time left to them. And that was never assured, they knew that well.

He had loved her, wholly, fiercely. More than that; he had never stopped. So when was he going to stop feeling sorry for himself and _do something about it?_

Words still eluded him, but actions spoke louder, always did. So he silenced the doubt in his mind, leaned forward, and pressed his lips to hers, inhibitions to the wind.

What started almost chaste blossomed into something hot and needy, all pretence stripped away under the caustic influence years of longing, coalescing into something neither could even hope to contain. Calloused fingers found the soft, supple skin of her thigh, traced it up to where the flesh swelled and the silky weave of something lacey both tempted and warned him.

Jill pressed a palm to his chest, pushed him backwards, fumbled in her purse for a keycard that almost slipped out of her grasp. When the door opened and they spilled into the darkness of the room, that fear, that indecision remained in the hallway, left to fester without fuel. Whatever tomorrow brought, he’d deal with it then. Tonight…tonight was about her, about them, and he intended to savour every moment of it.


End file.
